Profiles

Feature Story, Features, News, Profiles

Inspired Technologies

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He was a natural-born, one-in-a-million businessman, and nearly everything he touched turned from thin air to glittering gold. The company Wagner had co-founded, Inspired Technologies—and for that matter, most of the other companies he had co-founded over the years, including Lake Prairie Egg, Pharmacist’s Ultimate Health, and Geo Mask—had been or were widely acclaimed business success stories.

Cover Story, Covers, News, Profiles

Lori Wightman

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President of 500—employee New Ulm Medical Center

Eingang zur Klinik. It’s German for “Entrance to the Clinic.” New Ulm Medical Center has a healthy number of these Eingang zur Klinik signs in its hospitable hallways to help send ailing German tourists to the appropriate doctor. The signposts are fitting indicators. In heavily Teutonized New Ulm, after all, people would expect hospital and clinic signs to speak auf Deutsch.

Feature Story, Features, News, Profiles

15 Years – Special Section

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Learn what’s new with more than 75 people featured on our cover.

In September 1996, we began our current format of in-depth cover story interviews by featuring U.S. Reps. David Minge and Gil Gutknecht. In part, we changed formats because of earnestly believing most readers would prefer learning about people rather than products or issues, which had dominated our magazine’s early content. Business, after all—and anyone having been in business knows—consists primarily of people in relationship to others.

In addition, we believed a business was best discovered through its leader’s mind and heart. Business culture always begins at the top and filters down. It’s the leader that really makes a business beat and with whom people really need to “connect.” Businesses are unique only because their leaders have been unique, and that uniqueness usually arises from a leader’s upbringing, character, response to failure and success, taste for risk, and adaptability.

Hot Startz!, New Business, News, Profiles

Olive Leaf Pantry, DCS Fitness, WOW! Zone

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Fairmont: Olive Leaf Pantry – Selling hard-to-find grocery, dairy, and frozen items benefiting people whose bodies can’t tolerate gluten, lactose, nuts, eggs, soy, tree nuts or other foods.

Mankato: DCS Fitness – “I decided I wanted to begin competing in figure and bodybuilding—that’s what started the idea of opening DCS Fitness.”

Mankato: WOW! Zone – Over the last six years, Pam and Doug DeMarce were regularly discussing “doing something” because of their running out of space on Victory Drive to expand.

Cover Story, Covers, News, Profiles

Robyn Waters

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Former Target VP and Trendmaster

In 1975, Mankato State senior Robyn Niichel looked like most other students walking across Stadium Road to their parked automobiles. Not much stood out. She hailed from small-town rural Minnesota—even attending a one-room schoolhouse for one year. Only a few years before had she begun controlling her stuttering.

Cover Story, Covers, News, Profiles

John Finke

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Business Person of the Year 2009

John Finke, our Business Person of the Year 2009 and president of Mankato-based, $155 million HickoryTech Corporation, also accents his conversations with a choice word. It’s “certainly,” an adverb, which means definitely, positively, undoubtedly or unquestionably.

Hot Startz!, New Business, News, Profiles

Spinning Spool Quilt Shop, Midwest Horse Digest, Sven and Ole’s Books

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New Ulm: Spinning Spool Quilt Shop – “I was sewing by hand with my grandmother and mother when I was little, making doll clothes, for instance,” said Val Besser, owner.

Blue Earth: Midwest Horse Digest – Rahn Greimann’s grandfather and mother owned horses, and his godparents owned a pony farm where children could ride for $1.

New Ulm: Sven and Ole’s Books – Sven—yes, there really is a Sven in New Ulm—came here in 2006 when New Ulm Medical Center hired his wife as an orthopedic surgeon.

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