Remembering Upsize Minnesota co-founder Wes Bergstrom

When Wes Bergstrom was in college in the 1960s, he turned in a paper late. The professor had given him an incomplete, but wrote him a letter saying he could go get his grade changed. He didn’t do it right away, but did take care of eventually.

“He saved it for like 20 years and he brought it in and got his grade changed when he decided to go back to school,” Megan says, adding that when she was in high school, they took a psychology class together at the University of Minnesota. “He was an amazing student.”

Megan says her father was devoted to his family, his music — especially Bob Dylan — and his work, which for the last 30 years of his life involved publishing “how-to” magazines aimed at providing usable information that would help small businesses grow.

Wes Bergstrom died unexpectedly last March 2020, leaving behind his wife Georgene, three daughters, nine grandchildren and a great-grandson.

Committed to work and healthy living, Georgene and Megan described Wes as sometimes stubborn and driven, definitely a workaholic.

“He was a perfectionist, very much so,” says Megan, recalling her teenage years when she would wake up around lunchtime to the sounds of Bob Dylan and the sight of Wes hunched over his work at a table in the living room.

“It would be every weekend, during the week,” she says. “I’d hear it before I even got down the stairs. He was always poring over things.”

Yet he was always present as a parent and he was, Georgene adds, committed to a healthy lifestyle — almost too committed, both joked.

He ran around Lake Harriet in Minneapolis every day, played touch football and pickup basketball regularly into his later years and gave up drinking, smoking and consuming sugar and caffeine nearly 40 years ago. 

“When he set his mind to something that was it,” Georgene says. “He never had a slip.”

“He was a little hard to live with at that time,” Megan joked.

Wes was also a voracious reader, sometimes having 20 books open at a time. And they were all print edition so he could highlight favorite passages.

“He sat on the couch in his room and he had his table and his bookshelves and he had bookmarks in all of them,” Megan says. “He could explain every single one and what stage he was at. He had a lot of interests. He was a philosophy major.” 

And he never stopped learning, which fit with his love of magazines. He worked in advertising sales at Corporate Report before ascending into the role of publisher, which he held for three years. He left there to help start Minnesota Ventures, his first foray into the “how-to” niche.

In 2002, he, Beth Ewen and Jonathan Hankin co-founded Upsize, where Wes served as president and publisher.

Wes Bergstrom surrounded by his wife, Georgene, and daughters Jessy, Tambre and Megan.

Family man with a sense of humor

While he had a serious side, friends and family say Wes also had a “droll” sense of humor. 

Bob Stavig, who worked as an ad salesman at Corporate Report first and then became sales manager when Wes was promoted to publisher, says Wes’s humor created a fun atmosphere that helped people work in roles that could be stressful. Wes’s “super organized” methods for tracking ad sales stuck with Stavig throughout his career, as did Wes’s professional and fair approach to the job.

“His humor was just out of this world,” says Stavig, who says he was crushed to learn that Wes had died. “He was a tremendous human being and a big influence on my life.”

Jay Novak, who ran editorial at Corporate Report until he was promoted to associate publisher reporting to Wes, recalled one of their first meetings. In their early days, the magazine had a strict separation between editorial and advertising, so beyond a handshake they had barely spoken until an all-staff meeting. Novak introduced himself and said he’d been with the magazine six months. “We celebrated at our house a week ago,” Wes joked.

Novak says they became friends quickly and kept in touch long after Wes left to start Minnesota Ventures.

“He was a friend in addition to being someone I reported to at work,” Novak says. “He was a good person to work for. He believed in treating people decently and making clear what he wanted when he was in a reporting situation. He was always very reasonable and easy to get along with.”

Novak says when Wes and Brett Johnson started Minnesota Ventures, they basically took ownership of the “how-to” niche in the Twin Cities and never let it go. It started out, Georgene says, as a way for the new product to stand out in a competitive media market.

“He thought that was an open niche that wasn’t being filled,” she says,

But Rick Brimacomb, founder of Brimacomb Capital, Brimacomb & Associates and Club Entrepreneur, says it was something of a calling for Wes, as well.

“Wes liked being a resource,” he says. “He thought ‘how-to’ added the most value.”

Wes and Georgene were friends of Brimacomb’s parents and his companies co-sponsored some business networking events with Upsize.  

He described Wes as a great builder of relationships who “might be the biggest fan of Bob Dylan who ever lived.” He also loved brainstorming solutions to problems, both those confronting local businesses and those woes often confronting the local sports scene, especially his beloved Golden Gophers basketball team.

He had tickets close to the floor. “He could watch the facial expressions, hear the cuss words and hear the coach barking at the players,” Brimacomb says. “It brought him into the action, just like getting to know the business leaders and executives he interacted with.”

While he was driven by work, Brimacomb adds that Wes’s family meant the world to him. “He treasured his girls, including Georgene, and his grandchildren.

“He was a good man,” Brimacomb says. “It’s not easy to replace a friend that had depth, family history, compassion and shared interests. I miss him.”