Y Barbers
Bernie Koenigs began his haircutting career in a drafty supply room at a U.S. Army base in Ankara, Turkey, where he pruned soldier’s hair for a few extra bucks. He had no training. The year was 1958, at the peak of the Cold War.
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Author: Daniel Vance
Z. Sam Gault
Z. Sam Gault doesn’t own the biggest or by any means the most powerful bank in southern Minnesota, but his family has owned one in St. Peter, Minn., since the days of U.S. President Chester Arthur in the White House. He owns Nicollet County Bank, which in 2000 had nearly $100 million in assets. And Gault tenders an excellent interview: often his answers are sharper than Lizzie Borden’s axe.
Read MoreSchmidt’s Bakery
Earlier this morning I’d eaten but one lone bagel, flavored with Smart Balance margarine that contains no sugar and only five fat grams per single serving. I’d purposely starved myself. Two hours later, and now, on the road to my next assignment, I am nearly drooling from being tempted with thought after delicious thought of making taste bud love to a glazed doughnut.
I am motoring towards Sugar Mountain.
Read MoreDennis Miller
He is on the wildest ride of his life, having recently burst through the turbulent stratosphere on his way up, up and away towards the outer reaches of the ionosphere. But don’t worry: it’s a self-imposed ride, and Dennis Miller has a wireless telephone in his rocket for emergencies to summon help if things really get out of hand.
Even though 2000 revenues for the business he pilots, Midwest Wireless L.L.C., officially won’t become known until mid-March, preliminary figures suggest the company — owned by a private group of nearly 50 independent telephone companies — has passed the $100 million mark for the first time. That’s quite an updraft for a business that didn’t officially begin until 1996, and had 1998 revenues of only $43 million. In contrast, it took North Mankato’s Carlson Craft nearly 50 years to pass $100 million.
Read MoreWinco
Ralph Call, 55, runs all his southern Minnesota business ventures out of his comfy home, snug up against the snow-capped Rockies in scenic Providence, Utah. He stays connected to Minnesota via a computer, fax, telephone and a 300 m.p.h. turbocharged Piper Malibu Mirage that flies back and forth monthly. It’s one heck of a commute.
Read MoreWilliam J. Bresnan
Madison Lake-native William J. Bresnan, as much as any other American, made the cable TV industry into what it is today. During cable’s adolescent growth spurt, 1965-1984, he was a top executive, usually a CEO, at either the nation’s No. 1 or No. 2 cable TV company. From 1984 on he would raise up his own sizeable cable TV enterprise, Bresnan Communications – and also spearhead ventures that would thread cable TV throughout Poland and Chile. He never was as flashy as Ted Turner or Jack Kent Cooke, his former boss, but his contributions to the cable industry have been just as substantial.
Read MoreUpper Midwest Management Corporation
Many entrepreneurs attribute at least some of their business success to having earned a four-year college degree. Jim Thomas, 58, owner and president of Upper Midwest Management Corporation (UMMC) in New Ulm, attributes some of it to not having earned one.
Read MoreJeanne Votca-Carpenter
The lady next to the Trix rabbit ears who has been wringing stories about a kid burping the alphabet on Jay Leno will do almost anything to let the whole world know about her employer and her industry. She’s Jeanne Votca Carpenter, 49, Senior VP of Marketing & Business Development at the 230-employee Bloomington office of Shandwick International, the world’s No. 3 public relations firm.Though usually she doesn’t spend time inside this particular Shandwick brainstorming room (see above), she still must sell and market the creative juices flowing inside it. In a way, she is the top public relations person for a top public relations firm.
Read MoreFly Away AgriProducts Inc.
Boo-hoo, said the businessman because he couldn’t find enough qualified workers to help him make his product line. The labor shortage in Minnesota had inflated his wage costs and cut his margins to the bone in a dog-eat-dog industry. What was he going to do?
When Duane Sibbet was hit with the above quandary, he didn’t boo-hoo. Rather he did what he thought made sense: he closed up shop. And close he did – his Twin Cities home construction business – and began a whole new career and business at age 40 in Blue Earth, Minn., compliments of that city’s economic development authority and an idea gleaned from his parents’ horse blanket business.
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