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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.
Labor Day means an Editor labor day. I will be finishing yard work and figuring out what to do with a basement entrance. I hope you spend your Labor Day relaxing. That said, buckle your seat belt and away we go…
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.
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.
When I set up shop as a graphic artist, I never thought about the cyclical nature of business. It didn’t take long, however, to learn there is a natural ebb and flow to every type of business. I became accustomed to a cycle of slow summers and insanely busy winters. Starting Connect Business Magazine was, in part, a strategy to modify that cycle and help my design company tack through the doldrums of summer.
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.
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.
If it were possible to capture Lissia Laehn’s youthful energy and multi-tasking efficiency in a container, she probably would have the product available in her shop. It would be just one more service provided to her customers. Laehn (pronounced Lane) is the owner of the multi-faceted business Heartland Embroidery.
I own a 100-year-old building in downtown Nicollet. It’s where I started business in 1979. Around back, there used to be a thick woody vine that may have been as old as the building itself.
