I was the kid you didn't want to give a screw driver, because you would quickly find things disassembled. I wanted to see how things worked, how they went together.

I grew up in rural Nebraska at a time when our family was of little means, what my brother and I had was often earned by hard work and being entrepreneurial, figuring out how things work.

This 'figure out how things work' continued as I went to work for Occidental Petroleum in the mid 90's as deregulation of Natural Gas came to the Chicago Market area.

Why is this important?

It was during this time as we on-boarded clients for new services we used a product called BusinessUSA from American Business Information (now DataAxle). I got introduced to this thing called "DATA"...

This thing called "DATA" became my new obsession, as I witnessed first hand how it helped me know more, and close more business.

I came back to the Omaha area and went to work for American Business Information right away, I wanted to learn more about this thing called DATA.

Fast forward to 2005, I started First Direct. Simply because I believed that my clients and my clients clients deserved only the best solution to solve their business problems that were holding back growth.

The constant problem my clients and many others have is DATA, what to do with this thing called DATA.