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Karau Farms & Harvesting

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Dean Karau is a man of the land. He lives in the farmhouse where he grew up and he cash crops the family’s rural St. James acreage. That, in itself, doesn’t set him apart from other Minnesota farm kids who grow up to take over the family farm. It’s what he does when he’s away from home that gives the story a twist. For three months each summer, he cuts a swath across parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota, harvesting grain from about 7,000 acres.

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Minnesota Control Company

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The proposed sale had caused electrical engineer and project manager Mike Behsmann a great deal of discomfort. His employer, Mankato-based pet food and feed behemoth Hubbard Milling, had been only days away from being sold in 1991 when the mega-million dollar deal evaporated almost overnight.

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United Commercial Upholstery

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It looked like Chris Vorwerk was reeling from a Caribbean voodoo curse in 2000-01. She had started United Commercial Upholstery in her New Ulm garage at 409 North Broadway on a shoestring budget. During her first year in business, an ex-convict crow-barred his brawn inside to sneakily steal her expensive sewing machines and colorful upholstery fabric.

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Volk Electric

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Although an electrician by trade, Brian Grey is a storyteller by temperament. Seated in a St. Peter restaurant to avoid interruption by employees, he fueled himself with more than a pot of decaf coffee as he related anecdotes about his life and his business.

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Jerry Dulas

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Business Person of the Year 2010 – Runner-Up

Jerry Dulas is much more comfortable moving dirt from the seat of an excavator cab than sitting at an office table answering a magazine writer’s questions. That’s why his daughter, Tanya Pierce, offered to buffer the experience by joining in the interview. It was Tanya who nominated her father for Connect Business Magazine Business Person of the Year 2010, somewhat to his dismay.

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Bryan Sweet

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Business Person of the Year 2010 – Runner-Up

In roundabout fashion, sour has become deliciously sweet for Bryan Sweet. To begin, when he was only age four, his father and mother’s marriage soured down in Blue Earth. Then Dad decided to live much closer to Mankato and would not utter another word to Bryan the rest of his life. It was painful.

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B&D Metalworks

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If not for being shaped and sharpened by challenge after challenge, Brett and Dynette Niebuhr almost certainly wouldn’t have had the background or passion to start Wells-based B&D Metal Works—let alone grow and adapt it so well—to serve the metal working needs of Upper Midwest customers.

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Lake Region Times

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Since the early 1700s, when John Peter Zenger was tried for seditious libel (and exonerated), American journalists have been willing to go to jail to uphold the principles of a free press. Jerry Groebner, the editor and publisher of the Lake Region Times, has taken the journalistic tradition to a new level.

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