Undercurrents of emotion bubbled up from within 52-year-old Glenn Miller (photo left), as he tried explaining the unyielding pressure he and his partners had felt over the course of Dayport’s chaotic history, of their Herculean efforts trying to stay afloat, of contrite promises to investors, of risking their personal fortunes.
Surrounded by a Dr. Pepper memorabilia collection on the shelves and walls of her office in Fairmont, Lisa Dahl explains how she had her ducks in a row that day in September 1983 when she approached her local banker for a loan to start up a business.
Consider: Art Olsen was the fifth child of the county courthouse custodian in Estherville, Iowa.
He was the president of Advertising Unlimited in Sleepy Eye, an R.L. Polk division in Detroit, R.L. Polk itself in Detroit, and Norwood Promotional Products in Austin, Texas. These businesses ranged in size from $60 million to $450 million in revenue. Since 2003, he has been president and co-founder of New Ulm-based start-up Beacon Promotions Inc. His most recent company custom prints and supplies promotional products to 4,500 distributors—and is growing rapidly.
Bill Soderlund was sitting with more than 120 other pharmacy students in a lecture hall at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, when the professor posed a question: How many of you, he asked, are planning to own and operate your own pharmacies when you finish your degree.
Soderlund’s hand shot up.
Jerry wore a happy face. But inside he was crying.
Through his company BAMCO, Inc., he owned and operated McDonald’s franchises in Northfield, Faribault, and three in Mankato. He had every reason to be hilariously happy, including his selling of Happy Meals, and having been with McDonald’s since 1958—billions and billions of sandwiches before Ray Kroc dreamed up two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Having been in on the ground floor of the greatest restaurant success story of all time, Jerry was so steeped in the happy ways of McDonald’s that he and it were as one.
The New York Times was on line one.
Mankato’s Dr. Gary Jernberg pressed the beige telephone receiver against his chin and simultaneously punched the flashing button. Nursing a sore throat all morning long with Hall’s Mentholyptus, he felt out of sorts, perhaps the result of his body rebelling against having to return from a splashy Virgin Islands vacation. So much for flying under the radar, he thought. The media waited.
Todd Snell grew up inside Rivieras and Electras.
Similar to being a military child, he moved from town to town along with his mother and two brothers whenever his dad received marching orders from General Motors headquarters. The Snells followed their father to Minneapolis, Billings, Duluth, and Chicago, all before Todd started the sixth grade.
The orange tuxedo—complete with top hat, cane and shiny shoes—is a dead ringer for the one Jim Carrey wore in the movie Dumb and Dumber. But when Tom Fallenstein puts it on to conduct a tour of Costumes Galore, his 9,000-square-foot business in downtown Mankato, the suit is the only similarity to Carrey’s ridiculously stupid character.
At 25, Fallenstein is president and CEO of a company doing more than $2 million in sales in 2006, including $1 million in October alone. Almost 99 percent of that business was conducted online, not out of the storefront he and his family operate on the south end of Mankato’s Front Street. And therein lies Fallenstein’s genius: He’s figured out how to work the Web.
Most people scrapbook memories.
Roxie Mell-Brandts of Garden City, Connect Business Magazine Business Person of the Year 2007, preserves hers by restoring a Minnesota town.
