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Nicollet South Bike Shop

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You may never meet another married couple quite like Gene and Margo Hoffmann. Except for their wedding date – “It’s in 1964, I know that much,” claims Margo – neither know the important dates that most people would have memorized along life’s path, such as the year they began Nicollet South Bike Shop, or the year they purchased their rural Nicollet home, or the years they graduated from Mankato State. Even when pressed about her husband’s age, Margo had to fidget five or six seconds. “Fifty-nine, because he just had a birthday,” she says.

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Timeless Images in Metal

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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.

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Meter-Man

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Listening to 70-year-old Lyle Stevermer talk about his company is like watching an inquisitive man trying to pencil in a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle for the first time. He has lots of ideas, but doesn’t know where he will put them all.

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Ground Zero Services

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At night when most southern Minnesota businessmen are snoring loudly and dreaming of sugar plum profits, New Ulm native Jon Gasner is roaring his machine across a Wal-Mart parking lot, gulping hot java, and trying to stay awake by shoulder shimmying to Alabama and Alan Jackson. Other than being a fastidious neatnik, buying a $35,000 vacuum sweeper in 1998 to begin a new business with no customers, purchasing the old UPS facility with no renters, and circumnavigating a messy divorce in 2001, Gasner’s story has little shine.

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United Spray Systems

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They say God works in mysterious ways.

Le Sueur’s United Spray Systems owes much of its current good fortune to one tough-as-nails kid, Blake Plonske, 11, who beat long odds in surviving 13 major surgeries after being born prematurely in 1990.

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Fairmont Artificial Breeders

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Haul a well-bred, 700-pound boar to a “genetic transfer station,” put him to work artificially inseminating hundreds of sows, and he’s worth $5,000.

Haul that same high-priced boar to market and he’ll bring $105 to $140 at the slaughterhouse, a humiliating 15 to 20 cents per pound.

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Shuffle Rhythm.com (Henry Busse Jr.)

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The 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.

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Palmer Bus Service

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Even a dirt-poor farm kid, mocked by classmates for his ragged clothes and brown-bag lunches, can make a million in America. That may be the paramount lesson of Floyd Palmer’s life, a life no longer endured in rural squalor because Palmer followed his instincts. “I didn’t want to live poor. I wanted to own my own business.”

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