Profiles

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Wes Clerc

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Fairmont resident Wes Clerc (pronounced Clair) serves up more than French fries and Angus Deluxe burgers.

Yes, he and son Rick own and operate five thriving McDonald’s franchises in Fairmont, Blue Earth, St. James, Windom, and Marshall. And yes, 60-year-old Clerc over the last 44 years has been thoroughly batter-dipped and deep-fried in McDonald’s elbow grease, having worked his way up Ronald McDonald’s corporate ladder from being a 16-year-old crew worker to senior business consultant to franchisee.

Feature Story, Features, News, Profiles

LJP Enterprises

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80-employee St. Peter solid waste and recycling services company offers profitable alternatives to landfill dumping.
In writing To A Mouse, eighteenth century Scots poet Robert Burns penned, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.” Perhaps a modern version of expressing this oft-quoted line: A person’s best plans often become fouled up.
And such was Larry Biederman in 1974.

Feature Story, Features, News, Profiles

Twin Rivers Archery and Outdoors

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Around 10 a.m. on the first Tuesday in September, Mitch Lewis settled back in the chair behind his desk and said he had most of the day for a Connect Business Magazine interview, at least until 3:00 p.m. At that time, he had to be home because his children, Carson and Brooklyn, would be out of school, and wife, Maria, was traveling on business.

Cover Story, Covers, News, Profiles

Curt Fisher

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Forget nine, Curt Fisher has nine hundred lives.

He has badly wrecked a BSA motorcycle, lost altitude and crashed a power parachute onto a Blue Earth County park pavilion, navigated the dangerously rocky Blue Earth River perhaps hundreds of times on a jet ski, sailed across the rough Atlantic Ocean in a sailboat, and barely survived his antique steam engine flipping over before a North Mankato parade. And we’re just getting started.

Feature Story, Features, News, Profiles

Norsoft

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This could be Greater Mankato’s most breathtaking and peaceful panorama of the Minnesota River Valley. Soothing classical music from Bach and Beethoven to Berlioz on KGAC-FM glides around workstations and faintly filters through hallways. Twelve employees—and the only sounds they create are whispers and feather-light keystrokes.

Shhh.

Feature Story, Features, News, Profiles

Ideation Consulting

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What if employees looked forward more enthusiastically to the start of the workweek than to weekends? What if “TGI Monday” became a national slogan? What if all workers looked forward to working 80,000 hours during their lifetime? If so, Sara Christiansen, founder and vice president of New Ulm-based Ideation Consulting, might have to develop a new career.

Feature Story, Features, News, Profiles

Windings Inc

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Montana big sky country starts on green grassy plains before gradually flexing foothill muscles westward to reach white snow-capped Rocky Mountain highs, and swirling twinkling stars. It’s a spirit-awakening landscape only a masterful creator could artistically arrange. From this vivacious Van Gogh canvas hails soft-spoken Montanan Jerry Kauffman, president and CEO of 90-employee, New Ulm-based Windings.

Hot Startz!, New Business, News, Profiles

Cornerstone Pizza & Pasta, Body Healing By Suzanne Kral, Prairie’s Edge Landscapes

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Jim Weber and Joe Leinpz opened Cornerstone Pizza & Pasta at 2 East Minnesota in March.
After graduating from Sleepy Eye Public in 1979, Suzanne Kral first worked in the Army National Guard doing office work, then as a nurse’s aide, a daycare owner, and finally seven years ago as a nurse’s aide again.
For three years, Andy Budahn and Matt Furth (son of former AMPI executive Mark Furth) worked side-by-side in the Twin Cities. In April 2010, the two began Prairie’s Edge Landscapes in New Ulm.

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