How We Learned

Starting with a paper route when I was four, yes it was a really small town, I have always had an entrepreneurial bent.  I had all of the youth businesses and experiences common to growing up in the 1970's.  I mowed lawns, raked leaves, tilled gardens, sold flower seeds door to door.  Anything to make a buck.

Growing up in a rural area, I got involved in the Future Farmers of America, the FFA, and learned more about planning, budgeting, looking at results and identifying problems.  From there I had one goal, be a banker in a small town in Nebraska.  The banking chaos of the mid 80s cut that short and I changed my focus to accounting.  Passed the CPA exam.  Went to work for a small firm for a tax season and realized public accounting was not for me or my family.

Corporate accounting was though.  I helped make some significant changes for a company and was introduced to the consulting world when I drove a project to re-implement our ERP.  For the first time in 10 years, the owner was able to have departmental financial statements.  Statements that identified strengths and weaknesses he felt, but had no data to bake up his feelings.  At that point, he was able to make some decisions about the business and how to increase the bottom line. 

For the next 30 years or so, I worked with  small and medium businesses implementing and improving their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.  Working with all departments across many types and sizes of businesses gave me a hands on learning lab where I continued to add to my toolset.