Preface: Those readers who have basic mathematical capabilities may be able to deduce several things about the author from this blog, including his age. While this cannot be helped, we strongly encourage those readers to use their powers for good instead. If the conclusion about the author’s age is inescapable, then we recommend that the reader tries to forget this age. One method for forgetting this number is to try to recite pi backwards. Enjoy 95356295141.3 😉
On July 5, 1995 I was twenty-three years old. I had just spent the last six months trying to negotiate and buy a packing and shipping franchise in New York City and on this day I was handed the keys to that store. By now I had completed all of my training at “corporate” and I was ready to be a good franchisee. I did all of my New York City training in a West Village store owned by Jerry Noonan. This, he always felt, was ironic because Jerry had actually been trained in my store before I bought it. At that moment, both the world and the future could not have seemed more bright. I am sitting in that store right now, in the basement at my office desk. Thinking back on all of the ups and downs, all of the changes and challenges, all of the joy and sorrow of the last seventeen years of owning my little store on Columbus Avenue is almost overwhelming to me.
I’ve spent the last several days moving heavy file cabinets, sweeping floors, and organizing. In about twenty-four hours, I will be handing the keys to a new owner who, I hope, will do just as good a job running it as I did. There is no way for me to encapsulate or give true reverence to everything experienced in what, to me, feels like an entire lifetime.
EZTrackIt package tracking software grew naturally from everything I learned at my Columbus Avenue store. The EZTrackIt package logging system has grown and evolved and there is no way for me to overstate how happy this makes me. But at the same time, I still feel sadness today as I let go of my store and the chapter of my life that it represents. By any logical measure or standard, this is the best possible thing that could happen for me and yet it is still quite difficult to do. If I were to continue to do things as I have been for the last several years, our package tracking software would suffer. I would not be able to keep innovating and improving the package logging software and my relationships with our clients would suffer.
Change is difficult for almost everyone, even me. This is why almost 60% of the people we talked to about package logging tell us that they still log packages by hand. It’s difficult to let go of something that has worked for a long time, even when you are faced with the realization that holding onto the past prevents you from attaining your future. It’s okay to be nostalgic. You should take a moment to bid farewell to your paper package log. But bid that log farewell as I do to my beloved Columbus Avenue Manhattan Mailroom. You must. Your future awaits.
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