The year 1994 was the worst and best of times in the life of Jeff Flood, owner of Calendar Specialists of Minnesota and Sportsman’s Specialties, both operating from his rural North Mankato home.
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Amber Pietan’s Eagle Lake family used to take annual driving trips out West. She said in a Connect Business Magazine telephone interview, “We’d stay at KOA campgrounds and dad would make coffee and toast around the campfire. I have really good memories of traveling.”
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Certified life coach business owner, House of Hope development director, North Mankato city council member, landlord, and community leader goes full throttle to help others improve.
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From day one in 1989 through today, the reputation, future, and survival—literally everything, involving printing presses to profits to people—of 285-employee Corporate Graphics Commercial of North Mankato has rested solely on its being able to adapt to and fulfill rapidly changing customer needs.
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At the time, Kimberly Danger, then of St. James, Minnesota, couldn’t completely comprehend the lifelong implications of what was happening around her. Her mother and father were prudent spenders, especially mother Jean, who regularly redeemed grocery store coupons, shopped thrift stores, and hunted garage sale deals like nobody’s business—and brought Kimberly along.
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Dan and Angie Bastian of Angie’s Artisan Treats—the parent company of Angie’s Kettle Corn—are pop artists. They have turned ordinary, slightly sweet and salty kettle corn into an artistic subject, a 180-employee North Mankato manufacturing facility into a painter’s palette, and grocery store shelves into a consumer canvas. And a ravenous public devours this pop art.
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Doug Anderson lucked into it. He would be first to tell you. But nearly all businesspeople luck into opportunity. Connect Business Magazine over its 17-year history has featured hundreds of businesspeople that happened to be in the right place at the right time, including some of the more financially flourishing, such as Bill Bresnan, Tom Rosen, and Glen Taylor.
Read MoreBusiness Person of the Year 2010 – Winner
Tourists enjoying kitschy oddities often travel to Minnesota’s Lac qui Parle County and its 1,200-population county seat, Madison, known as the “Lutefisk Capital of the United States.”
Read MoreHe was on the precipice. It was December 2004. The antagonistic managers of his ten bus companies had just attempted a bloodless coup d’etat. Their set of demands included having Floyd Palmer relinquish control over the day-to-day management of the school bus company he had owned and managed since 1974.
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