By All Means

What happens when that corporate leadership path leaves you a bit unfulfilled? Amanda LaGrange got involved in the creation of a social enterprise designed to reduce waste and create jobs. Two years later, she exited the Fortune 500 career she thought she wanted to run that new social enterprise. LaGrange is the CEO of Repowered, formerly Tech Dump. Established in 2011, Repowered is now one of the largest collectors of e-waste in Minnesota and has processed more than 35 million pounds of electronic waste while also providing jobs and training for people facing barriers to employment, and building a marketplace for affordable refurbished electronics. That’s what the nonprofit calls a “triple bottom line.” “Impact work has to be financially stable,” LaGrange says. “Where there’s no margin, there’s no mission.” LaGrange talks about the role of founder vs scaler. She offers insight on the pros and cons of being a non-profit vs a social enterprise business. She talks about the "pile of denial" lurking in our cl

Scott Olson is the founder of one of the most iconic lifestyle products to come out of Minnesota in the 20th Century: the Rollerblade. He didn’t invent the inline skate, but he improved on a design that had virtually no market traction and made it an international fitness phenomenon and a product that endures still today. Launched in 1980, Rollerblade steadily grew into a hot commodity. But by 1986, Olson was out of the company. Just 19 when he started working on the product, he had the vision and drive, but lacked the business know-how to scale the brand. Money problems forced him to sell to Robert Sturgis and Robert Naegele, who soon took over the company and eventually sold it to Nordica, which is now a division of Technica Group and still the parent company to Rollerblade. "I was bummed out for a day or two," Olson recalls. But I had to regroup. I still had the goal of being successful with this product." And despite the disappointment, he considers his Rollerblade run a success. It's the product that d

“Know what your mission is and what your values are. You can’t engage in everything. If there’s an issue that affects your mission and values, you better speak out. You better be behind it.” Bill George is the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, and currently a professor at Harvard Business School. He’s the author of several books on leadership. The latest, "True North: Emerging Leader Edition," coauthored by millennial entrepreneur Zach Clayton, calls on executives to lead with their hearts. In a wide-ranging conversation, George recounts his own path to leadership, and what he’s learned about success. Driven by Medtronic’s mission to “alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life,” the company’s market capitalization grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion during his tenure from 1991 to 2001. “You’re here on earth for a short time and you want to make a difference. I felt like leaders can make the greatest difference because they have such a powerful impact on people. It can be for good or it can be for

“We are trying to build a really amazing company founded on principles of equity that makes money…and that delivers a new future for what work can look like.” Kate Downing Khaled is the founder and CEO of Imagine Deliver, a Minneapolis-based consultancy that specializes in workplace transformation. She takes us inside her process of finding new ways forward by putting people who have experienced a problem in the design chair. “Change is really hard,” Khaled says. “Sometimes an outside perspective can really help leverage what’s new.” She’s also using technology to solve for the current workplace challenges around recruitment and retention and shares a preview of her new software platform Mailroom, designed to help companies maximize the potential of their own employees. “The future of our workplaces is going to be determined by the people who work there. We can’t hold tight fisted to the old ways of being,” Khaled says. “There is no going back.” How does one learn to become a change agent? In Back to t

“I didn’t have a business model. I had an idea. And I refused to give up.” Former pro athlete Tyrre Burkes is on a mission to make youth sports safer. His Minneapolis based company, Players Health, provides a platform for coach credentialing and training, injury reports, management, and abuse investigations. The company has raised $30 million since its 2016 formation. But Players Health really hit its stride just a couple of years ago when Burkes realized a huge opportunity in becoming an insurance brokerage. In 2021, Players Health sold $7 million in insurance policies; this year it expects to top $40 million. Already one of the top 10 providers of youth sports insurance, Players Health serves 60% of U.S. youth soccer teams and more than 50,000 teams across sports in North America. Burkes’ entrepreneurial journey is one of perseverance and pivots. The child of a single mother who grew up on the south side of Chicago, he credits sports with saving his life and taking him all the way to Winona State Unive

Julie Allinson didn’t just create a company; she invented a new product category in 2000 with the launch of Eyebobs, the eyewear brand that turned reading glasses into a fashion statement. With its bold colors and daring shapes, Eyebobs developed a cult-like following that included celebrities from Elton John to Lauren Hutton. Today, Eyebobs offers both prescription glasses and readers that are sold in hundreds of stores nationwide as well as online and at three company stores in and around Minneapolis, where the company is based. Allinson sold Eyebobs to Northwest Equity Partners in 2015 and is no longer involved in the company. She offers a rare look back at her unexpected entrepreneurial journey from recognizing the opportunity idea, to finding the right audience, to knowing when it was time to step aside. Allinson started her career in finance at Piper Jaffray. She had moved on to a startup that she was helping to raise money when the numbers on the spreadsheet started to look a bit fuzzy. So Allinson w

Manny Villafana is responsible for some of the most important breakthroughs in cardiovascular health care in the last five decades starting with Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. (CPI), the world’s first lithium-powered pacemaker and St. Jude Medical, which introduced the heart valve that became the industry standard and was sold to Abbott Laboratories in 2016 for $25 billion. He’s now working on his eighth startup, Medical 21, which is developing an artificial artery for bypass surgery. Human clinical trials could start in the next six months. His career history reads like a playbook on innovation. “If you don’t take risks, nothing’s going to happen,” says Villafana, who is 81 and shows no interest in slowing down. “I go after things that people say can’t be done. That’s one of the greatest pleasures in life. Just go the opposite direction.” He charts some key career highs and lows, from being fired by Medtronic and then sued by the company that eventually gave him free access to its patents and bought his secon

When Junita Flowers was at her lowest, baking cookies became an escape. She turned that feeling into a social enterprise business. “Junita’s Jar is so much more than a delicious bag of cookies,” Flowers says. “It’s a bag of hope.” But striking a healthy balance between purpose and profit can be challenging for a mission driven startup. The initial model of selling to businesses that would bring Flowers in for “cookies and conversation” about surviving domestic violence and overcoming adversity proved difficult to scale. The pandemic, and the social unrest that followed the death of George Floyd just blocks away from the Junita’s Jar kitchen and offices in Minneapolis gave Flowers time to recalibrate and take advantage of mentorship and grant programs like Stacy’s Rise Project. Target also took an interest, and helped Flowers gear up for a national launch of Junita’s Jar. HyVee will follow in August. A focus on growing the business, Flowers has realized, will give her a larger platform to share her purpo

As the co-founder of Primp, a Minneapolis-based “cheap chic” boutique chain that grew to nine stores throughout the Midwest and a robust online following, Michele Henry had barely taken time off with her first two kids. When her third baby arrived, she vowed to take a true maternity leave, and that’s when she realized that an entrepreneur never really stops. Short on time for herself with three little ones at home and suddenly dealing with postpartum skin issues, Henry wished for a spa where she could run in for a quickie skin treatment—without all the trappings, or price tag, that typically go along with a “spa day.” Express facial spas were beginning to pop up on the coasts, but there wasn’t one in the Twin Cities. She went to work on a business plan for Face Foundrie, a facial bar focused on “efficient, effective, approachable” skincare. In late 2018, Henry sold her half of Primp to her founding partner and immediately signed a lease for her first Face Foundrie, which is now a fast growing franchise chain

Most people demonstrate their adoration of a consumer brand by buying a bunch of its products. Tom Sega bought the company. Since becoming the owner and CEO of Duluth Pack in 2007, Sega reinvigorated the brand's positioning, greatly expanded the product line and reach, and improved efficiencies that made the American-made, handcrafted canvas and leather goods collection profitable once again. Duluth Pack celebrates its 140th anniversary this year. In 2017, he did it again, buying another Duluth brand that had fallen on hard times. Spring Creek Manufacturing makes canoe paddles, mounts and an ever-expanding array of products. Resuscitating an historic brand while paying homage to its culture and traditions requires a delicate yet focused act of leadership. For Duluth Pack, Sega says the key is staying true to core values: Quality, premium products, made in America, lifetime guarantee for all craftsmanship and hardware. “We don’t apologize for who we are.” Sega shares the history of one of northern Minnesota’

In the early 2000s, leading consumers to a brand on the Internet could seem like a mystery, and Nina Hale loved the challenge. After years of working in advertising and digital strategy for other companies, Hale launched her own Minneapolis-based performance marketing agency in 2005. She called it Nina Hale Inc. and specialized in search engine optimization. Clients included UnitedHealth Group, Renewal by Andersen, Land O’Lakes, and other national brands. In 2014, with 50 employees, Nina Hale Inc. converted to an ESOP, an employee stock ownership plan. Hale then began her long goodbye, retiring in 2020 at which time the agency renamed itself Collective Measures. Hale has become a big advocate of the ESOP model. "It's really for people who want to have some sort of legacy, and for people who want to pass wealth on to their team." Today, Hale mentors other founders on exit planning. “if you don’t have an exit plan,” she says, “You don’t have a plan.” Hale talks about the evolution of digital marketing, an

Spencer Johnson sketched his initial designs for Sota Clothing as part of a class project while pursuing a graphic design degree at the University of Minnesota Duluth. His clean, modern designs and signature crossed paddles caught fire, and within a few years of graduating, Sota Clothing hit $1 million in sales. Sota became a fixture at popup shopping events and the Minnesota State Fair; the apparel brand started wholesaling to more than 100 stores around the state and opened two of its own stores in the Twin Cities. Other states got interested, which led to a second brand under the Sota umbrella, Classic State, creating designs for the other 49. Johnson is also working on designs for products that could represent all states, while maintaining the brand’s local flavor. He talks about slow growth, social media marketing, the importance of being omnichannel, and the challenges of being a creative thrust into the role of CEO. As Sota Clothing hits its 10-year anniversary, Johnson is actually pulling back and

The secondhand clothing market is growing 11 times faster than traditional retail, according to research by Global Data. Children’s clothing is the fastest growing category, which makes sense considering the typical baby churns through seven sizes in the first two years of life. Kidizen, an online resale marketplace for kids clothes, makes selling those outgrown onesies as easy as taking a smartphone photo and posting it to the site. Finally, the market has caught up with the Minneapolis tech company, which launched in 2014 and hit profitability in 2021. “It takes way more than you think,” says CEO Dori Graff, who charts the journey she and her co-founder Mary Fallon went on from becoming moms to recognizing the opportunity to create a kid-centric marketplace. “We felt so confident in what we were doing, what we were building.” They found a devoted audience out of the gate, and its grown to nearly 1 million users as more consumers and brands prioritize sustainability. When Kidizen launched, brands worried i

Chemist and professor Paul Boswell couldn’t get over how little his students knew about how computers work. He started building a three-dimensional model to teach programming and realized he could turn it into a game. Named for Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, Turing Tumble is basically a marble run that teaches people how to build computers—something no other game was doing at the time. Teachers and science nerds love it; kids of all ages will put down the screens to play with it. But perhaps even more impressive than creating a mechanical computer both educational and entertaining, is the grassroots approach Boswell and his wife Alyssaalso a former teacher and now CEO, took to turning Turing Tumble into a $4.5 million business in just four years. No angel investors, no big branding agency, no retail partner. Just a homemade video to tell their story and a Kickstarter campaign to shore up enough money for the initial manufacturing run. They needed $40,000. They raised $400,000. And now t

While building a career in financial services by working with large banks and investment firms, Dionne Gumbs grew increasingly bothered by the inequities in access to capital. She left the corporate world to pursue a big idea: remove the obstacles that prevent women and people of color from accessing the financial tools they need to succeed. In 2018, she launched GenEQTY, a fintech platform that provides small business owners with tools to scale their businesses. “Build what you can until you can’t build it anymore,” Gumbs says of working for larger financial institutions. “Ultimately, I just knew it was time.” She turned her idea into a business plan through the Bush Institute’s Presidential Leadership Scholars Program. MasterCard’s Start Path Program has given her additional runway to scale the platform. “It’s not just about the technology and the bank products; it’s about the voice of the people we want to serve,” Gumbs says. “Small businesses are such a big market. These are businesses focused on gro

The gig economy wasn’t a thing in 2002 when Amy Langer and John Folkestad launched Salo LLC, a Minneapolis-based professional services firm that got its start placing senior level finance experts on project work, and soon expanded to HR, consulting, and more. Today, Salo is a national firm with more than 900 employees. The company recently hit a major milestone: $100 million in annual revenue. Langer and Folkestad are still 50-50 owners of Salo, but they’ve stepped away from day to day management—a shift made easier by the pandemic. Now more than ever, it’s clear Langer and her partner were ahead of their time in building a business around project based work. “It wasn’t mainstream then,” Langer says. “We just always believed if we created a place that people wanted to work, and we continually got them work that challenged them, and respected how they wanted to work, that it could be pretty great.” Langer outlines some of the key steps that set up Salo for success: - Hiring a coach to help the team work

Robbie Harrell started an ice company before he owned a freezer or knew anything about carving. Today, Minnesota Ice is the nation’s largest producer of sculpture-grade block ice and artisan cocktail ice, manufacturing and delivering up to 50 tons of ice per day. That’s after a pandemic setback that might have put the company out of business if not for Harrell’s doggedness. “Give me two weeks,” he told his team when Covid-19 shut down events and bars—his two biggest revenue drivers. “I will come up with a plan. I didn’t come through all of this to not make it out.” That attitude inspired Minnesota Ice when Harrell was an undergrad, doing deliveries for another ice sculpture company. It occurred to him that automating ice carving would make the business more efficient. When his employer said no, he left to start his own company with the help of a mechanical engineering student who built their first carving contraption. Their first sculpture nearly melted before they could deliver it, and actually broke in

The founder of 2 Gingers whiskey is at it again with a new Irish whiskey called Red Locks. Serial entrepreneur Kieran Folliard shares the process of launching new businesses, and why he’ll never retire. “I don’t play golf, I wouldn’t be any good on a beach," Folliard says. "I get to do something I’m passionate about, excited about.” He grew up in rural Ireland. He liked sports and drama. He describes himself as a daydreamer—not an entrepreneur—but from the time he was 12, Folliard worked—retail, construction, farming in Saudi Arabia. Eventually, travels in the U.S. brought him to Minnesota, and a job at a search firm where he helped startups find employees. Until one day he realized he needed to flip the script and start something of his own. He started with something near and dear: an Irish Pub called Kieran’s. From there, he built a portfolio of bars and restaurants, including the Local and the Liffey. In 2011, he exited the pub business to start 2 Gingers, which he sold to liquor giant Beam Suntory. Th

Sally Mueller got inspired to become an entrepreneur as she entered menopause. A seasoned executive who launched dozens of successful lifestyle brands, product lines, and designer partnerships for big companies including Target and Clique Brands, she was shocked to find that beauty and wellness companies weren’t addressing symptoms of menopause in a modern way and set out to fill that void with Womaness. Launched as an omnichannel brand in 2021, the Womaness product line includes vaginal moisturizer, the “Gone in a Hot Flash” cooling mist, dietary supplements and serum. “I think a lot of women are saying, ‘finally.’” says Mueller, who has a co-founder, fellow retail veteran Michelle Jacobs. Market watchers peg women in menopause to represent an opportunity of $150 billion or more. Mueller takes us through the process of building an omnichannel consumer brand from naming it and setting the brand pillars to raising money and navigating supply chain challenges. "I think a lot of the innovation happens after

Emmy Award winning TV host Ian Grant is an entrepreneur driven by passion. He loves travel. He appreciates art. He is a gifted storyteller. And he’s found a way to turn those interests into his life’s work, culminating with his new PBS television series Culture Quest, in which he takes viewers around the world to experience different cultures through the lens of artists. Getting there has taken creativity, hard work and lots of rejection. “You have to be ready and willing to fail. Over and over again,” Grant says. “And be willing to go back in. You also have to be willing to accept criticism.” Grant peels back the curtains on the TV business, from the lack of reality in reality TV to the cancellation of his Travel Channel series The Relic Hunter—right after winning an Emmy. After years of pitches and auditions, he landed his PBS series, only to be left on his own to fund it—which he did, through a creative partnership with Gustavus Adolphus College. Along the way, Grant also built a successful furnitur