Connect Business Magazine

Since 1994: The Magazine for Growing Businesses in Southern Minnesota

Author Archive

So. Minn. Skydiving, So. Minn. Surgical, The Picker-Uppers

Sep 2010 • Category: Hot Startz!

Southern Minnesota Skydiving opened for business at Le Sueur Municipal Airport on May 15, 2010.
Dr. William Lee of Blue Earth began seeing potential in developing a niche market in southern Minnesota: Lap-Band surgery for weight loss.
The Picker-Uppers owner, Justin Keech, learned a lot from his mother, Sue Rothmeier, a New Ulm RE/MAX real estate broker.



Curt Fisher

Sep 2010 • Category: Cover Story

Forget nine, Curt Fisher has nine hundred lives.

He has badly wrecked a BSA motorcycle, lost altitude and crashed a power parachute onto a Blue Earth County park pavilion, navigated the dangerously rocky Blue Earth River perhaps hundreds of times on a jet ski, sailed across the rough Atlantic Ocean in a sailboat, and barely survived his antique steam engine flipping over before a North Mankato parade. And we’re just getting started.



Off-The-Cuff

Sep 2010 • Category: Off-The-Cuff

Labor Day means an Editor labor day. I will be finishing yard work and figuring out what to do with a basement entrance. I hope you spend your Labor Day relaxing. That said, buckle your seat belt and away we go…



Norsoft

Sep 2010 • Category: Feature Story

This could be Greater Mankato’s most breathtaking and peaceful panorama of the Minnesota River Valley. Soothing classical music from Bach and Beethoven to Berlioz on KGAC-FM glides around workstations and faintly filters through hallways. Twelve employees—and the only sounds they create are whispers and feather-light keystrokes.

Shhh.



Windings Inc

Jul 2010 • Category: Feature Story

Montana big sky country starts on green grassy plains before gradually flexing foothill muscles westward to reach white snow-capped Rocky Mountain highs, and swirling twinkling stars. It’s a spirit-awakening landscape only a masterful creator could artistically arrange. From this vivacious Van Gogh canvas hails soft-spoken Montanan Jerry Kauffman, president and CEO of 90-employee, New Ulm-based Windings.



Cornerstone Pizza & Pasta, Body Healing By Suzanne Kral, Prairie’s Edge Landscapes

Jul 2010 • Category: Hot Startz!

Jim Weber and Joe Leinpz opened Cornerstone Pizza & Pasta at 2 East Minnesota in March.
After graduating from Sleepy Eye Public in 1979, Suzanne Kral first worked in the Army National Guard doing office work, then as a nurse’s aide, a daycare owner, and finally seven years ago as a nurse’s aide again.
For three years, Andy Budahn and Matt Furth (son of former AMPI executive Mark Furth) worked side-by-side in the Twin Cities. In April 2010, the two began Prairie’s Edge Landscapes in New Ulm.