Undercurrents of emotion bubbled up from within 52-year-old Glenn Miller (photo left), as he tried explaining the unyielding pressure he and his partners had felt over the course of Dayport’s chaotic history, of their Herculean efforts trying to stay afloat, of contrite promises to investors, of risking their personal fortunes.
Read MoreSurrounded by a Dr. Pepper memorabilia collection on the shelves and walls of her office in Fairmont, Lisa Dahl explains how she had her ducks in a row that day in September 1983 when she approached her local banker for a loan to start up a business.
Read MoreBill Soderlund was sitting with more than 120 other pharmacy students in a lecture hall at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, when the professor posed a question: How many of you, he asked, are planning to own and operate your own pharmacies when you finish your degree.
Soderlund’s hand shot up.
Read MoreThe New York Times was on line one.
Mankato’s Dr. Gary Jernberg pressed the beige telephone receiver against his chin and simultaneously punched the flashing button. Nursing a sore throat all morning long with Hall’s Mentholyptus, he felt out of sorts, perhaps the result of his body rebelling against having to return from a splashy Virgin Islands vacation. So much for flying under the radar, he thought. The media waited.
Read MoreTodd Snell grew up inside Rivieras and Electras.
Similar to being a military child, he moved from town to town along with his mother and two brothers whenever his dad received marching orders from General Motors headquarters. The Snells followed their father to Minneapolis, Billings, Duluth, and Chicago, all before Todd started the sixth grade.
Read MoreThe orange tuxedo—complete with top hat, cane and shiny shoes—is a dead ringer for the one Jim Carrey wore in the movie Dumb and Dumber. But when Tom Fallenstein puts it on to conduct a tour of Costumes Galore, his 9,000-square-foot business in downtown Mankato, the suit is the only similarity to Carrey’s ridiculously stupid character.
At 25, Fallenstein is president and CEO of a company doing more than $2 million in sales in 2006, including $1 million in October alone. Almost 99 percent of that business was conducted online, not out of the storefront he and his family operate on the south end of Mankato’s Front Street. And therein lies Fallenstein’s genius: He’s figured out how to work the Web.
Read MoreIt was their wedding day—May 15, 1993—and everyone was at their home in Mankato having a good time. Then the phone rang and interrupted their party.
“It was the American Legion,” Lee Bohrer remembers. “They had a wedding of their own going on there, but they were having some problems with their drains. I looked at Kris, and she said, ‘You gotta go.’”
Read MoreSarge ordered them to march.
He was a rough-and-tumble five-foot-five, joined the Army in ’49, and fought communists in Korea from Pusan to the China border. Think Popeye after spinach. As an Army master sergeant, Vernon “Sarge” Carstensen faced the Red Menace again during two tours of duty in South Vietnam, earning the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Silver Star. He was rough, he was real, he was old-school.
Read MoreExamples of how to run a highly successful $260 million corporate division roll off Bob Whitney’s pursed lips like 60 mph change-ups off Johan Santana’s spindly fingers—it’s a thing of beauty to watch, because few are better at it.
The 47-year-old Whitney is vice president of manufacturing for the Waseca division of Washington state-based, NASDAQ-traded Itron, which also has facilities in Raleigh, Oakland, Spokane, rural South Carolina, and four foreign countries.
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