The Customer Who Made Me Learn Computers

My parents ran a mailing business, and one of their customers came to us with an interesting proposition. They had mailing work spread across the country and wanted to bring it under one roof. If we could get a computer, consolidate all of their data, print the labels ourselves, and meet the postal requirements, they could stop juggling multiple mail houses.

The small catch was the data: roughly 1.2 million addresses scattered through something like 120 separate databases and files. Nobody at our shop had a ready-made system for that. I certainly did not. But the business opportunity was real, so I started learning.

I taught myself the computer and database skills I needed, including dBASE. Then I built the system that brought those files together and supported the address work needed for CASS—the Postal Service's Coding Accuracy Support System. It was not elegant because I had spent years dreaming about databases. It worked because the customer needed an outcome and I kept learning until we could deliver it.

That experience quietly set the pattern for most of my career. The technology is rarely the starting point. Start with the problem, then learn or build whatever the problem requires.