When I was young I was the kid you didn't want to give a screw driver, you would quickly find things disassembled as I had a hunger to figure out how things worked. 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.

This same approach continued as I went to work for Occidental Petroleum in the mid 90's bringing deregulation of Natural Gas 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 Business USA from American Business Information (now InfoGroup). I was fascinated at the DATA (the deep business information) that was available on businesses and what it meant from a sales standpoint to 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.