Daniel Vance - Connect Business Magazine

January 1, 2000 Daniel Vance

Aqua-Ozone

When a General Mills or Pillsbury president stumbles onto what seems like a fantastic idea for a new product, they have the wherewithal to bring in an army of Ph.D.s, M.B.A marketing gurus and ivy league patent attorneys in order to carry that idea to market. In a large corporation, the idea-to-market process may take years and tens of millions to play out. With General Mills, in ready-to-eat cereals, for example, long-term successes are rare, even after pumping over $30 million in advertising alone into each new product introduction.

Cover Story

November 1, 1999 Daniel Vance

Stafford Harder

The man wearing a leather Harley-Davidson jacket and responsible for 2,100 paychecks scoots into his parking spot off Tower Boulevard riding a steely gray BMW K1200 LT touring motorcycle. His photogenic smile brightens up the receptionist while he waves at her on his way up the spiral staircase at Carlson Craft headquarters in North Mankato. Another day begins for Stafford Harder, 48, Glen Taylor’s flagship field general, as he then strides towards an office embellished with miniature toy Harleys and classic Chevys, a wall-hung photo of a laguna blue convertible, and Bible verses engraved on wall plaques. A quick call later, and at his desk, he has confirmed next year’s reservation at Sturgis.

Feature Story

November 1, 1999 Daniel Vance

LeSueur Inc.

If you’d asked Mueller and Prevot in 1990, Will you ever see the day when you’ll have to turn away business because of a labor shortage? they would have answered, Never.

Yet today 550-employee strong LeSueur Incorporated sits with land in Le Sueur ready for expansion, cash waiting, booming sales, so many potential customers you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one, yet it can’t expand because workers are in such short supply.

Cover Story

September 1, 1999 Daniel Vance

Tom Rosen

Tom Rosen, 51, stands tall in a tasseled cornfield. He’s a great big mountain of a man, 6’5″, 250-plus, who towers over a crowded room both physically and professionally. Success didn’t stunt his growth. The family business he guides, Rosen’s Diversified, Inc. (RDI), grossed $550 million in 1998, which makes it Minnesota’s sixteenth-largest privately held business. Of businesses headquartered in south-central Minnesota only AMPI ($1.1 billion) and Taylor Corp. ($950 million) are larger.

Feature Story

September 1, 1999 Daniel Vance

Orthopaedic & Fracture Clinic P.A.

Please forgive Dr. Wynn Kearney, Jr., senior partner and president at Orthopaedic & Fracture Clinic P.A. (OFC), if he seems preoccupied with the future.

For thirty years his specialty has been in a state of constant flux, and the next thirty won’t be any different. He doesn’t know yet whether OFC’s Mankato office will expand on-site, out to land on the outskirts of Mankato, or over to Immanuel St. Joseph’s Mayo Hospital. And there’s more: demand for OFC’s services has increased so much it recently had to thoroughly and tirelessly search for a new physician with the “right stuff.” Other exhaustive recruitment forays are on the horizon.

Cover Story

July 1, 1999 Daniel Vance

Rick McCluhan

If a draw on his slow-burning Macanudo and a sip of his Beaujolais Nouveau doesn’t get your blood moving, his in-your-face pragmatism towards politics definitely will. Rick McCluhan, 42, born of a full-blooded Sicilian mother and Scotch-Irish father, carries a zest for life, business and politics that few southern Minnesotans can match.
From his Sicilian mother’s genes he seems to have inherited a blunt pragmatism and a fondness for pasta, cigars, and wine. It was the Sicilians’ neighbors, the Romans, after all, who coined the phrase II vino veritas: In wine there is truth.
On his Dad’s side, his heritage extends back to the feisty Protestants of Northern Ireland, who bred such Revolutionary War patriots as Patrick Henry of “Give me Liberty or give me death!” fame. All three U.S. Presidents with a Scotch-Irish past began or greatly inflamed wars: Polk (Mexican), McKinley (Spanish-American), and Johnson (Vietnam).

Feature Story

July 1, 1999 Daniel Vance

Hendrickson Organ Company

He owns every issue of The American Organist published since 1929, and every issue of The Diapason back to 1913. Those trade magazines still print today. His bookshelves are crammed full of faded cloth books with out-of-print titles like Organ Building, Vibration and Sound, The History of the Organ in the United States and The Art of Organ Building. A few have German titles: Die Brabenter Orgel and Zungenstimmen. Not everyone builds pipe organs these days. When the company phone rings, Charles Hendrickson, 63, casually picks it up and says “Charles Hendrickson.” He absolutely loves his freedom as owner at Hendrickson Organ Company in St. Peter.

Feature Story

May 1, 1999 Daniel Vance

The Dam Store

Jim Hruska leaned across a table in his cafe replete with mounted walleye and tacked-up Polaroids of fishermen, and he smiled. Glancing over at his wife, Linda, he said, “Sure we work long hours, from seven in the morning until nine at night, seven days a week.” When most small business owners would have burned out in months with such a demanding schedule, the Hruskas have lasted 27 years quite nicely. It’s all in how they do it.

Cover Story

May 1, 1999 Daniel Vance

Jerry Crest & Doug Wood

With his sinewy hands touching together at the fingertips, Dr. Doug Wood, president at Immanuel St. Joseph’s- Mayo Health System, and cardiologist, tried clearing up some of the confusion about recent changes in healthcare. But it seemed, to this writer at least, a futile task. A state-of-the-art knowledge of healthcare, like that of computer technology, often lasts only a few months before becoming outdated.