By 23 he made his first offer on a business he was doing the accounting for, and sold himself to a banker to back the offer. At 25 he and a college friend saw an opportunity in the growing demand for used computer equipment, at a time when new computers were significantly more expensive than they are today. They moved quickly from selling computers for cash at a booth in the Fargo Convention Center to a scalable franchise model, sought after and purchased in 1996 by Grow Biz, now Winmark Corp, a large Corporation that continued to scale Computer Renaissance into a thriving reseller of used IT Equipment for years to come.

 

In 1996, after earning his MBA from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota—completing his final exams the morning his second daughter was born—he founded Opportunity Distributing Inc. Open to a wide variety of liquidation opportunities, he dove into a series of unconventional ventures, from buying and refurbishing golf carts to repackaging children's clothing and reselling gas station baseball hats—and, of course, IT equipment. Over time, the IT side of the business became more consistent, and he honed in on IT refurbishment and re-sale. One of the early adopters to data security measures, ODI became NAID AAA Certified in 2015 and has continued to stay on the edge of certification efforts to regulate not only the processing of IT equipment, but the disposal and end-of-life treatment of electronics and e-waste.