Bluffworks was a dream I had for a long time.My message to guys is you can wear the same pair of pants for a bunch of days without wrinkles, and still look great. And you sure as hell don’t need to pay for dry cleaning, or struggle with an iron.Our focus is to fuel whatever it is that drives you. You may love travel, or alternately working your ass off back home. Regardless, when you roll out of bed in the morning, I want your pants to be ready. I figure you have better things to spend your time on.I founded Bluffworks on Kickstarter in May of 2013 at: http://kck.st/JE6dpX. And ran it in parallel with my Invision job for a long time.I have been full time since January, 2015. At the time of writing in April I have some funding, but also a large task ahead in growing our revenue enough to become sustainable.We have some fantastic products coming to life. More of our attempts have failed to meet our standards than I would like. But when we put something out for purchase, you can believe in it, for real.

Invision is a tough story to tell. It's where I went from all fired-up and engaged to miserable, and eventually so unhappy that I found the courage to start my own thing.I was hired to work on a very theoretical and risky mathematical product that was to generate complex advertising proposals better than a human can. I had a great team, and we did good work for a while, but the product never went anywhere for a bunch of reasons that don't matter now.That was right around the time that Invision went through its "dark days". The original management left the company, and I had nothing to do. For a guy like me, sitting around all day was misery. But I was trapped and felt I couldn't leave because the economy had just crashed and I was sure I couldn't find an equivalent paying job to support my family in NYC.During the time, I dug deep. I moved my family in with my parents and considered leaving NYC in favor of a job on the west coast. But instead, we decided to stay and that I would pursue an entrepreneurial dream on my own.I launched Bluff Works on Kickstarter in May of 2012, and I didn't leave Invision until January 2015. For 2 1/2 years, I did both jobs in parallel. Honestly, it was brutal and I stayed at Invision far longer than I should have. The worst times were when both jobs urgently needed something, and I felt as if I was letting someone down.In the end, this job was the path that led me to Bluff. And despite all of the pain, I am grateful for the growth it forced me to achieve.How I did: Crappy, I think. My heart wasn't in it. At times, my managers seemed pleased but my "A" game never came to life here.What I learned: There's little worth sticking out a bad fit as long as I did. The stress re-wired me in ways I am still working to undo. A small part of a watermelon is worth more than a big part of an orange. I should have found help to focus on Bluff sooner. Everyone says this, but email me if you really want to know why.

My wife and I were ready for the next adventure in our lives, so we picked up stakes and move to Vietnam sight-unseen.It was hard to leave my super job at BPA, but just like when I left Nike, I was ready for the next thing. At FSoft, I ran the Change Management for a gigantic project to migrate Petronas - Malaysia's $40B National Oil Company - from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Technologies.My job included convincing the heads of Petronas' numerous operating units that their whole team must migrate to a new software platform next month. Imagine trying to influence the CEO of a $4B natural gas outfit, with thousands of employees. It wasn't easy.In the end, the team pulled it off. Working for FSoft was incredible, with camaraderie and a sense of purpose like no other. The Petronas project was described as FSoft's Din Bin Phu. (A story worth looking up, if not familiar.)How'd I do: Very well in the Change Management role. Despite having a fraction of the staff we needed, I basically kept us moving while the whole project held on tight.What I learned: Long list here:First, hungry cultures often outwork stable ones. There is no limit to how far the Vietnamese will go to be successful, and I met some spectacularly impressive people.Second, culture is everything. You know when you change jobs, and you're like "whoa, I can't believe how different this is". Working in another country eclipses those differences by a mile. A foreign culture comes with a whole story going on behind the scenes you aren't aware of. Third, I figured out my right role once and for all. In the beginning of the project, I led the whole thing, including a team of 200 Vietnamese programmers. FSoft management eventually realized this was a mistake and shifted me to be responsible for the Change Management alone. It was a blow. However, my boss was right, proven by the fact that the CM job was overwhelming.It was a fantastic experience that exhausted me, but which I would never trade.

My best job ever.As a contractor though Robert Half Technology, BPA hired me to define an "enterprise architecture". They told me the guy before me didn't show up for the interview, so I got the job.As BPA didn't know what they wanted, I had a ton of latitude and as a result, shined. I can honestly say that the combination of my odd-ball skills and being in the right place at the right time enabled me to make a historic contribution to the agency. From vision to execution, the whole thing was mine.BPA's $200M Fish and Wildlife Program had a lot of executional problems, so I pitched the idea of re-engineering how they managed projects run by 2,000 people in the field. We developed a software system that brought certainty and transparency to how contractors defined work, reported status, and tracked progress towards biological goals. Instead of people fighting about the details of a project, we delivered a foundation on which major policy discussions could take place. The team rolled the program out to all of the government agencies and native american tribes across the northwest. It was my finest hour.How'd I do: my best work ever.What I learned: How well things can go when the fit is right, that my strengths are purely non-technical, and I'm better at vision and leadership than execution.

A contracting gig for Vesta Corporation (www.trustvesta.com) was an in-between job for me in a period of turmoil for Vesta.How'd I do: not spectacular. I successfully brought a few new clients live, but the large projects I hoped for never got off the ground.What I learned: To send flowers to the spouses of your programmers after working them like dogs for too long. An amazing gesture.

After taking a year off from Nike, I met my wife and followed her to Nevada. Right when I was ready to get back in the game, September 11th struck and there were no jobs in Nevada.So I accepted a contracting position on another large reengineering project for Regence Blue Cross / Blue Shield (www.regence.com). After the Nike Supply Chan, this felt familiar to me. The politics should have too.For Regence, I ran a handful of customization projects for the Facets system. The whole thing was a disaster. Deloitte was running the project into the ground, and Regence had little ability or true motivation to fix it. In the end, I exposed Deloitte for what they were and they elected not to renew my contract. What a big surprise!How'd I do: Pretty good for a mess. I'm more of a positive leader and inspirer than a fearsome tyrant. But this is possibly the only time I whipped reluctant programmers to knock stuff out that they didn't want to do. And I am damn proud I stood to Deloitte to speak out for what was right.What I learned: That political forces can be bigger than me, and that not all environments are a great place to work.

Damn, I loved Nike. My first job out of college, I completely bought into the "Just Do It" culture. I worked my ass off, carrying a pager in the middle of the night and keeping a sleeping bag under my desk.My first job at Nike, I used C++ to write an order management system to capture auto-replenishment orders. This grew my knowledge of logistics and I excelled as an analyst and a leader. But although I enjoyed programming, it should have been clear right then that technology wasn't a long term strength for me. This was the last time I was ever a hands-on programmer.For my second job, Nike promoted me to manage a big part of the Supply Chain project. That is, they *over* promoted me. I ran a good part of the team that wrote 500 integration links between SAP, i2, Sales Force, and Legacy systems. At the peak, I had 50 people working for me - way more than I should have.In the end, I left Nike because I needed something new. I was working so hard, my ears would ring when I went to bed at night. It was time for me to travel and take on new things under my own power. So I just walked away.But before I did, I tried to ferment a coup. I went to Phil Knight warning of the problems with the Supply Chain project, and arguing he should replace one executive with another. I was already out the door, so I had little to lose. In the end, the Supply Chain became a competitive advantage for Nike, but not before suffering some major setbacks. I wonder if Phil remembered our conversation when the chips were down.How'd I do: Really super in my first role, but lackluster in my second one. I had no business being in the spot I was on the Supply Chain project, especially while the rest of the project was insanity. I didn't screw it up, but don't feel like I added significant value either. What I learned: Object-oriented programming, some serious HR lessons, and that when you tell someone that the person working for them is an idiot, you call them an idiot too.

Nabisco was my first job. Hired as an intern after my freshman year of college, they gave me lots of latitude to attempt way more than I could finish as a summer intern. I went back every summer of college and was excited to be there. Thinking about the times I shoveled defective Oreos off the production floor late at night on the third shift, still makes me smile.How'd I do: Great for an intern. But I had so much latitude with my own projects and technologies that after I left, there was no one to maintain my code.What I learned: Corporate manners, the difference between being hungry and being lazy, and that I loved to work my ass off for a team.