Focus

Upsize turned to several local communications experts and owners to learn how best to communicate business messages, inside and outside the company. Here are their top 10.

Over the years the St. Cloud area was known for being a leader in the granite, printing and agriculture industries.

It was the No. 2 producer of granite in the world, which in turn gave the city and region?located just over an hour northwest of the Twin Cities in Stearns County?the nickname Granite Country.

While the past has shaped the region?s history and economic vitality, the future of the community appears to be based around the development and success of the technology, biosciences and manufacturing industries.

Pegg Gustafson says it happens all the time: People are surprised at how large and diverse the St. Cloud business community is.

?We?re often thought of, still, as a small town,? says Gustafson, executive director of the St. Cloud Downtown Council, a not-for-profit organization that seeks to drive the economic and aesthetic vitality downtown.

The city may not be viewed as small much longer, considering the population growth. In 2000, St. Cloud Metropolitan Statistical Area?s (MSA) population was 167,392. The projected population for 2010 is 193,490.

Mackenzie Marketing bills itself as a hungry agency using brains, willpower and bottom-up branding to create “really good” communications for its clients. Company officials believe such work involves collaboration among employees.

Top tips Owners, experts share advice for making smart space deals by Beth Ewen   Upsize asked real estate experts and small-business owners to share their ideas for making the best use of their work space. Here are 10 top tips. No. 1: Everything’s...

Margaret McDonald had held top marketing positions with several companies before deciding to put her MBA to work for her own enterprise.
Abandoning the board room in favor of her favorite room ? the kitchen ? she opened Let?s Cook, a cookware store plus cooking classroom in Northeast Minneapolis in October 2004.

In the process, she tossed out the gospel preached by some of her business profs. She chose to staff her enterprise in an egalitarian fashion, drawing on her earlier degree in social work. Those choices have proved to be successful.

When Jodi Braun launched For Goodness Cakes in 2002, she was baking dozens of gourmet cakes out of her Eagan kitchen in what she calls a ?rickety old oven.?

?There were days when I had my counters covered with pans. It was crazy,? says Braun, adding that she baked about 200 cakes in her first few months in business.
Braun, now 50, also did all of the delivering, often driving to 12 houses a day.

She has come a long way from those start-up days. Today, she?s working with a big-name distributor, sells her cakes at Byerly?s, Lunds and Kowalski?s Market, recently landed a contract with Simon Delivers and is in price negotiations with several national retail chains.

Line Drive Sports, Lino Lakes, wants to expand into new areas of sports training ? adding basketball, weight training and hockey to its foundation of baseball and softball. To do so, President Tom Imdieke knows he?ll need to clean up his finances and take care of debt.

Midwest EAP Solutions, St. Cloud, is an employee assistance program whose founder wants to step back from the business in 2010. Douglas Adamek, CEO, has charged his management team with reaching a major financial goal first: to increase revenue by 20 percent each year for the next five years. Along the way, they want to show him they?re ready to take more responsibility.

Spray Control Systems, Blooming Prairie, makes plastic accessories for trucks and is growing at a fast rate ? so fast that President Craig Kruckeberg feels that he?s losing control. He wants to make smart decisions about adding warehoand office space, purchasing equipment, and possibly making acquisitions.

Tom Imdieke enjoys watching customers improve their baseball swings with his coaching. But what he?d really like to see is fewer strikeouts from his batting cage and sports instruction company, Line Drive Sports Corp.

Since its founding in 1981, St. Cloud-based Midwest EAP Solutions Inc. has been owned by CEO Doug Adamek, who holds a Ph.D. and is a Certified Employee Assistance Professional. The company grew from a single employee in 1983 to 20 employees and $2 million in revenue.