Sold profitably. This opportunity allowed me to become reacquainted with starting and managing a business. A small business differs from a large business in that the tasks are not distributed. Budgeting, advertising, sales, hiring, quality assurance, scheduling, systems, operations all exist in all businesses. It all happens in the same small business office and must be achieved with "big picture" thinking. Owning a Fish Window Cleaning franchise was a great, grounding experience.

I love data. I really see data. As an independent consultant, I was a software designer specializing in graphs, algorithms, and troubleshooting. I was in demand as a large database designer and modeler. I served as an information systems trainer, especially for Software AG's NATURAL, ADABAS, PREDICT, and NATURAL CONSTRUCT. (While employed at Software AG, I wrote the PREDICT, NATURAL Construct, and NATURAL Internals courses.) I copyrighted my Know-It-ALL method of training in the NATURAL/ADABAS environment. This opportunity allowed me the chance to see big business and government at work. I learned the not-so-obvious problems of human communication vs computer understanding. I learned the obvious problems of organizational structure vs functional strategy. I learned what organizations want is not always what they need. And I learned it can all be fixed once the true and changing parts are brought to the surface and seen. My clients were large organizations located all over the world and participated in diverse industries such as: Airlines, Insurance Providers, Long Distance Phone Providers, Manufacturers, State Governments, Universities/Colleges, etc.

(Software AG of North America) As a senior technical instructor for this software development company, I was responsible for teaching ADABAS, NATURAL, PREDICT, and NATURAL Construct courses. (ADABAS is a big database management system. NATURAL is a 4th generation programming language. PREDICT is a data dictionary. NATURAL Construct is a NATURAL code generator.) I was responsible for writing the PREDICT, NATURAL Construct, and NATURAL Internals courses. I also worked with SQL embedded in NATURAL (as an option) to access DB2 data. I learned a great deal about GOOD software here and how to implement it strategically. The Software AG tools are outstanding and it was great to understand how and why they got that way. I was lucky enough to work at Software AG North America during John Maguire's (founder) time as President.