HELP WANTED: Immediate opening for marketing professional to spread word about neat stuff made by inventor/artisan/craftsman. Must make up for 30 years of lost sales. Call 507-278-4302.
Arnie Lillo never placed that ad. He’s more interested in conceptualizing and creating than in selling his creations. He holds three patents and passed up several others. But not one of his ideas put him on a road to fame and fortune, for a variety of reasons.
Read MoreBob Freyberg comes from a long, strong line of petroleum salesmen.
He doesn’t touch the stuff himself anymore, except when fueling his auto, but he leans on his ancestral experience, traditions and values nonetheless.
Read MoreNo political organization could be more crooked than New York City’s “Tweed Ring” in 1868-71. “Boss” Tweed and his Democratic henchmen “Slippery Dick” Connolly, “Brains” Sweeney and “The Elegant One” Hall looted the City treasury of more than $45 million, primarily through shady deals involving unscrupulous contractors. Tweed himself amassed $12 million.
Read MoreThe life of Henry Busse Jr. has been a rollercoaster ride, with more twists and turns and thrills than most people experience in ten lifetimes. He began his wild ride at 3, when his famous father divorced his mom. Reconstructing a relationship with his absent father has been a lifelong avocation — and now it’s also his business.
His dad is a mostly forgotten man, dead 46 years, remembered only by the scattered enthusiasts who cherish big band 78s, black & white ’30s show posters and yellowing sheet music. But hot trumpeter Henry Busse Sr. truly is a legend. Al Hirt and Herb Alpert say they were inspired by Busse Sr.’s trumpet solos, particularly his rendition of “Rhapsody in Blue.” He and singer Bing Crosby invented the mute for trumpet.
Read MoreThe photo on Bob Alton’s wall for all eternity shows No. 9 Bill Mazeroski smacking a fastball off Yankee Bill Terry towards the cheap seats in the 1960 World Series. Maz’s homer will be enough for the Pittsburgh Pirates to win Game Seven 10-9.
Also hanging from Alton’s office wall are sketches from 1960s golf history: a hard-charging Arnold Palmer pumping his fist after draining a putt; a 54-year-old Ben Hogan launching a 3-wood on a Par 5 at Augusta National; a thin Jack Nicklaus walking up No. 18. Go Jack!
Read MoreHe 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 MoreThe 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 MoreJournalists believe everyone has a story worth publishing, maybe more than one.
But Mankato’s Charlie True, face-to-face with a journalist, seemed to mentally recoil from that notion, wondering aloud if he “was worth a story in Connect Business Magazine.”
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