By All Means

While working at HealthPartners as a front desk registrar, Katrina Anderson noticed that medical students were having trouble getting signed up for clinical rotations. She had the idea to create a platform that would allow hospitals to post their schedules online so students can easily and securely sign up. LinkedIn meets Airbn is how Anderson describes it. She and her partner called their software program Clinician Nexus. Founded in 2016, the startup has already raised $750,000 and is being used in 95 hospitals and 136 school schools around the country. They're just getting started. Clinician Nexus is about more than real-time scheduling, Anderson says. The platform addresses what has become a major problem for hospitals and medical schools: providing medical students with enough clinical hours to finish their degrees. “We might not have enough physicians if we don’t have enough slots to teach them and they can’t graduate on time. When you invest in the health care system, it improves patient outcomes.” A

Fred Haberman is co-founder and CEO of Haberman, a Minneapolis-based branding, advertising, and public relations agency that counts Volvo, Organic Valley and Boston Scientific among its clients. But he’s also a social entrepreneur with a passion for organic foods, wellness, and the outdoors, and so Haberman continues to launch other ventures, even while running his agency. Haberman founded the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships and grew it into an annual event drawing well over 20,000 players and spectators from across the country. He also co-founded Urban Organics, one of only two USDA certified organic aquaponics facilities in the country, which was acquired by Pentair in 2017. His latest venture is Freak Flag Organics, a line of flavorful condiments and sauces now sold online and in local grocery stores. “The idea is to be yourself in the world, and in the kitchen,” he says, adding that this is the brand he intends to focus on for the foreseeable future. But as you’ll hear, Haberman always has another idea.

By All Means host Allison Kaplan sits down with one of her mentors, Burt Cohen, founding publisher of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine and Twin Cities Business, to talk about the magazine business, leadership, and sandwiches. A 1955 graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Cohen’s publishing career included management roles with the New York Times Media Company, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Modern Medicine Publications. He purchased a small city magazine called MPLS in 1978 and transformed it into Mpls.St.Paul, now the Twin Cities’ leading lifestyle magazine and a leader in the field of city and regional magazines nationally. That was the beginning of MSP Communications, one of the first publishing companies in the country to create content for brands. MSP-C, the company's custom division, has developed more than 225 print and digital titles and platforms to date. In 1993, Cohen created MSP's second editorial magazine, Twin Cities Business, with the help of partners Gary Jo

Sisters Isabel and Caroline Bercaw started making bath bombs for fun when they were just 10 and 11 years old. Entrepreneurial at heart and encouraged by their parents, Kim and Ben Bercaw, the girls entered the youth division of the Uptown Art Fair in Minneapolis and sold out of bath bombs in a day. They came back the next year and caught the eye of a spa owner who wanted to sell their fizzy bath bombs with a “surprise” inside at his shop. They never looked back. Today, their bath bombs are sold at Target, Costco, and many other national retailers. Da Bomb Bath does around $20 million in annual revenue. And that figure could catapult, thanks to new branded partnerships with Barbie, Hot Wheels and Disney.  Isabel, 18, is now a freshman at the University of St. Thomas—part of the Schulze Scholars program for students who have demonstrated entrepreneurial leadership. Caroline is finishing her senior year of high school. The two are co-creative directors of the company they started before they were old enough to

David Kristal had no intention of going into business with his father Henry, co-founder of the Ember’s restaurant chain. But with the heyday of the 24-hour diner coming to an end and the 80-restaurant Midwestern chain losing money every month, Kristal joined his dad in 1997 to try to save the business. He managed to slow the bleed, although the restaurants never fully rebounded. In the process of trying, however, Kristal steered the company into the loyalty business. “We were in total crisis mode trying to figure out how to cash roll the business to avoid bankruptcy. We didn’t have a reputation in the loyalty space; we had to create it.” One service client turned into many and soon, the company had an entirely new focus in engagement and loyalty management programs.  Now called Augeo, the St. Paul-based company with more than 200 employees offers incentive and debit card membership programs in more than 50 countries. In 2018, Augeo spun off a fintech loyalty division for $140 million, and the company is gro

Chris Plantan traded building high rises for designing three-ring binders. Surprised that she couldn’t find stylish school supplies for her daughter to use in middle school, Plantan left a lucrative career as an architect in 2003 to start russell + hazel, an office products line that changed an industry. Hers was the first brand in a commodity driven category to treat paper products and office supplies as design objects. Her patterned binders, lucite sticky note holders and gold staplers blended function and fashion, and even inspired Martha Stewart who became a big fan of the brand and helped create national demand. Plantan sold russell + hazel, which is named for her grandparents, to Gartner Studios in 2009 and stayed on for three years. Next she co-founded a company called West Emory and took a very different approach, staying behind the scenes to design products for other retail brands including Crate & Barrel, Vineyard Vines, J.Crew, Target, and Nordstrom. She left earlier this year to recharge her crea

You might not know the name Sue Remes, but you’ve no doubt come in contact with her work for Kiehl’s, Frederic Fekkai, Lancome, Murad, Bumble and Bumble, Kevin Murphy, and others. She started her career behind the makeup counter for Clinique and worked her way up to Regional Training Manager before moving to Aveda Corp. where she was National Sales Manager and learned from industry visionary Horst Rechelbacher. The experience informed her entire career, but it was the last time Remes worked on staff. She went on to found Sue Remes Resources and become one of the most sought-after experts in the beauty business. Remes talks about the art and science of being a consultant and maintaining an outside perspective even while working on a brand for five to seven years. “I serve my clients better by being independent. I’m always thinking or looking at whatever they’re not thinking or looking at. What’s the thing right in front of you that no one else is seeing? That’s what I learned from Horst.” For those who go

Nancy Lyons is the founder and CEO of Clockwork, a Minneapolis-based experience design and technology agency that works with clients across industries. She’s a leader with a personal mission to “think strategically, act thoughtfully, be a good human.” As such, she spends much of her time speaking, writing, and thinking about the intersection of leadership, entrepreneurship, technology and people. “I don’t love tech,” Lyons says. “I love people and how tech supports and empowers people.” In this episode, Lyons walks us through her path into the tech industry—back when the Internet was in its infancy. She talks about learning how to code, learning project management, getting to a place where she feels comfortable being herself at work and speaking her truth. “What Clockwork is doing that I’m proud of is creating the space for uncomfortable conversations that ultimately lead to change,” Lyons says. “We have this idea that success looks a certain way—especially for women. We need opportunities to see ourselv

Brandon Sampson almost lost his hand in a farming accident when he was 8 years old. Nine surgeries and months of physical therapy sparked his interest in orthopedic medicine and rehabilitation. He was pre-med at Luther College, until a mentor introduced him to the field of prosthetics and orthotics. “When I saw people building a functional tool that never existed before for people missing limbs, I thought, this is what I want to do.” What he didn’t fully realize, as he started his career working for an artificial limb maker, was the power of his own entrepreneurial spirit. “I didn’t care if I succeeded or failed. I just wanted to feel like it was my doing.” After 15 years of working for another prosthetist, and many failed attempts to show his employer how to innovate and reinvent, he left to start a different kind of artificial limb company—one that focuses on function over form. Limb Labs opened near Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. in 2014. It looks more like a design lab than a medical office, with the fa

When Maia Haag told her boss at General Mills that she was leaving to start a personalized children’s book company, he told her to call him when she wanted her job back. “That just made me want to prove him wrong,” Haag says. That’s just what she did. Her Minneapolis-based company, I See Me! is now the largest publisher of personalized books in the U.S. With more than 50 titles and many other personalized products, I See Me! has sold millions of books for kids as well as pets, dads, and grandparents. Haag walks us through how she set herself up for success, from taking time to write the business plan to working for other Internet startups to learn what to do, and what not to do. Launched in 2000, I See Me! found its audience without the aid of social media. Haag reflects on her earliest days in e-commerce and how direct-to-consumer retail has evolved—for better or worse. In addition to e-commerce, I See Me! sells through retailers and has strategic partnerships with Shutterfly and other brands. In 2014,

Wiping out on Rollerblades and cracking his iPhone prompted Benjamin VandenWymelenberg to make his first phone case out of wood scraps. An architecture student who had grown up on a farm, he liked the idea of bridging technology and nature. Friends asked him to make phone cases for them, and that was the beginning of Woodchuck USA. In a matter of months, Woodchuck was selling through Best Buy and Target. Now seven years old, the Minneapolis-based manufacturer of wood products counts Google, US Bank, Ecolab, and Aveda among its custom clients, and sells in gift stores across the country. Woodchuck plants a tree for every item sold, which has resulted in millions of trees planted on six continents. From the start, Woodchuck’s mission was far broader than its product collection: “Nature back to people. Jobs back to America. Quality back to products.” Says VandenWymelenberg, “We might give up on the product, but we’re not going to give up on the mission.” While the core company continues to grow, Woodchuck al

Claire Powell is CEO of J.W. Hulme, the century-old leather goods brand based in St. Paul, Minnesota. She didn’t start it; she was brought in to resuscitate it. J.W. Hulme road the wave of the heritage movement—enjoying national media buzz around its history of U.S. manufacturing, but that hype didn’t add up to profits. Unable to succeed as a vertically integrated manufacturer that relies primarily on catalog and online sales, Powell found herself in the challenging position of having to change the business model. “We ended up having to make a really difficult decision,” Powell says. “Are we a manufacturer? Are we a retailer? Are we a brand? Who are we? Ultimately, a business has to sustain itself. It was really a fork in the road moment.” In 2018, J.W. Hulme, which is owned by a private equity firm, stopped manufacturing and outsourced production. Around 30 employees were laid off, and only a small marketing and sales team remain. “I’ve had a lot of difficult conversations over last year,” Powell says. “I’

Joe Keeley’s story is the stuff of business school legends—particularly at the University of St. Thomas where he was a student when he got the summer babysitting gig that sparked the idea for College Nannies, Sitters + Tutors, which he grew into the nation’s largest employer of nannies, sitters and tutors. Today, the company, which Keeley sold in 2016 to Bright Horizons, operates close to 200 franchises and has provided more than 2 million hours of child care. In 2000, Keeley answered an ad from parents who were looking for a college hockey player to nanny their two boys for the summer. Other parents started asking if he could help them find them a college student to watch their kids, and Keeley quickly realized the market was ripe for a professional placement service that would vet childcare providers and treat them as “role models” for kids. It made for a great news story, too, which is how Keeley built an early buzz without a marketing budget. But even as College Nannies, Sitters + Tutors was gaining m

About every five minutes, someone, somewhere in the world, creates a CaringBridge page. The Minneapolis-based social network makes it easy for people to communicate with loved ones during a health crisis by creating a centralized, private place to share updates and ask for help. Sona Mehring created CaringBridge in 1997. It started with a simple website designed to help friends share news about their premature daughter, Brighid. The power of that instant connection—at a time before Facebook and Twitter—prompted Mehring to build CaringBridge, a platform that was available, for free, to the public. From the newborn intensive care unit at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics in St. Paul, CaringBridge has grown into a global nonprofit with users in 235 countries. Mehring, a tech entrepreneur who was early to the Internet—launching her own web page design firm in the 1990s—talks about her decision to turn CaringBridge into a nonprofit, and leave her day job to run it. “I have a nonprofit heart with a for-profit mind

Kate Arends’ eye for design and instinct for connection helped her build an audience of more than 3.3 million for Wit & Delight, her blog turned social media platform. How to leverage that devoted following and capitalize on the opportunities that come with being a lifestyle brand continues to be a work in progress. Today, Wit & Delight operates its own rentable studio space in Minneapolis, creates products, content, and consults with major brands including Nike, Amazon, Fossil, and Sleep Number.  But Wit & Deight didn’t start with a business plan. It started as a creative outlet for Arends, and it grew organically for five years before Target came calling and offered her a limited edition design collaboration she couldn’t refuse. “It wasn’t until the opportunity became so apparent that I thought, if I don’t seize this, I’m going to regret it.” Even now, with a team of six and national sponsorships, Arends is constantly reevaluating her influence and opportunities. She’s thinking about how to scale a busin

Clarence Bethea does not fit the typical venture capitalist’s profile of a promising founder. He grew up in a broken home, got into trouble with the law, dropped out of college. But when he started working in a group home with vulnerable adults, something clicked. Through a series of jobs and mentorships, he realized what he was meant to do: start something. “My heart and soul is built to build something big.” In 2015, he launched Upsie, a warranty app designed to make it easier and more affordable for consumers to protect their purchases. Very quickly, Bethea pitched Upsie for the Techstars business incubator program and since then, it has grown 300 percent every year, with customers in all 50 states. Bethea has raised $8.5 million for Upsie, despite odds stacked against him. “People invest in people who look like them. Venture capitalists are mostly white guys. I definitely don’t look like them.” Bethea talks about the challenges of raising money and the vast inequities that exist in the VC space. “if I

Kristin Shane is the founder and CEO of Fly Feet Running, a group fitness workout with two studios in the Twin Cities and hopes of going national. Launched in Minneapolis in 2016, Fly Feet is thriving in an increasingly crowded field, and Shane says she’s proud to be among the 2 percent of women-owned businesses to make it over the $1 million mark in annual revenue. But she still has big hurdles to clear to achieve the goals she’s set for Fly Feet, and getting this far did not happen by chance. Shane charts the experiences that led to starting her own business—from consulting for Accenture, to a stint in the Peace Corps, and an 11 year climb at Target, where she eventually landed as a vice president in the beauty division. Shane was part of the team that led Target’s disastrous expansion into Canada. She talks about what she learned from that failure, and how it set her up to become an entrepreneur. “All the ingredients are here for a personal disaster,” she recalls of her time in Canada. “And I’m not wil

Rhoda Olsen didn’t grow up thinking she’d one day run a $1.5 billion company. She didn’t have any female role models in business. But she found the way to lead with heart, and data, and in the process, she helped Great Clips become the world's largest salon brand. Olsen is vice chair of the board of Great Clips, a Minneapolis-based franchise salon chain with 4,400 locations and more than 40,000 stylists nationwide. She stepped down as CEO in 2018. But she continues to work closely with leadership, and franchisees. She’s considered the heart and soul of the company, and a major factor in its epic growth over the past 30 years.  Olsen went to college at a time when women were discouraged from pursuing careers in math, so despite her natural talent with numbers, she focused on social work and started her business career in human relations. It took her brother Ray Barton’s encouragement for her to not only come to work with him at Great Clips in the 1980s, but to buy stock in the company at a time when she and

Michael Fanuele is a brand strategist who has worked at JWT, Havas, Fallon, and most recently served as chief creative officer at General Mills. There, he tried to inspire a big food company to be a good food company, and in the process, helped Cheerios and Nature Valley grow for the first time in a decade. Currently, he’s the founder and CEO of Talk Like Music, a consultancy that helps people, places, and brands become more inspiring. His new book is called Stop Making Sense: The Art of Inspiring Anybody. Fanuele became interested in the topic of inspiration when he found himself caught up in the theatrics of U2, a band he despised. He wondered what it was about Bono that had the power to move even the most reluctant fan. And he started thinking about how that same feeling could apply to other aspects of life and work. “The inspiration equation is pretty simple: passion minus reason is inspiration,” Fanuele says. "You’ve got to find a way to make things odd enough, strange enough—music-like enough that sp

Dave Kapell founded Magnetic Poetry, a first-of-its-kind novelty item that brought poetry into the kitchens and onto the refrigerators of millions of people around the world in the mid-‘90s. An accidental entrepreneur, he came up with the idea of putting words on magnets while writing song lyrics, and when friends wanted magnetic poetry kits of their own, he turned it into a business. “I went viral before there was going viral,” he says. To date, Magnetic Poetry has produced more than one billion world tiles in more than a half dozen languages and sold more than 3 million kits worldwide. Kapell still runs the Minneapolis-based company, and has never taken a dime of outside funding. His unlikely path to entrepreneurship includes a garage band, writer’s block, arts and crafts, Davanni’s magnets, a house party, student loan debt, and a very memorable sneeze. On this episode of By All Means, Kapell shares his entertaining founder’s story and what he's learned about running a business along the way. After ou