Focus

Milt Toratti has energy. He has passion, vision and plenty of opinions. He has a no- nonsense, cut-to-the-chase style that makes one want to get right into their business idea and hit the ground running.
The Mankato resident is a one-man small-business encyclopedia and he?s here to help the small-business owner through his Mankato-based company, the Riverbend Center For Advanced Enterprise Facilitation (RCEF). Toratti says he founded the company to capture the passion, skill, resources and imagination of local entrepreneurs and existing business owners to help them realize their dreams.

Karen Houle will be the first to admit, she isn?t very good at predicting the future. She isn?t a business owner who pours hours into market research hoping to find the next big thing.
But she listens to her customers, and that could be the key reason her company, University Language Center (ULC), is rapidly growing.
Houle is founder and president of the Minneapolis-based company that provides comprehensive foreign language services to businesses, adults and children. Those services include language instruction, translating, interpreting and proficiency testing.

Tom Meacham had no experience in the giant inflatables business when he purchased Burnsville-based Landmark Creations in 1993.
But he had two things going for him: his mechanical background, and staff members who knew what they were doing.
?I had a background in manufacturing and people, basically, and the rest took care of itself,? he says. ?I also knew that there were talented people that worked here that certainly could do their job already.?
If the last 11 years have been a learning experience for Meacham, president of Landmark, the lessons seem to have sunk in. Today Landmark is a 12-employee company with revenue of more than $1 million last year. The company has grown to a comfortable, manageable size, says Meacham.

The book world changed 22 years ago when consultants Tom Peters and Bob Waterman wrote In Search of Excellence. It created a new industry of business books and a new arena for business leaders.
Fast-forward to today. Stroll through a bookstore. Rows of books cover success, leadership, management strategies, advancement, investing, motivation, sales, consulting, business profiles, human resources, e-commerce, starting a business, careers, marketing, advertising, negotiating and wealth.

To win the Upsize Growth Challenge, the owners of three different companies wrote compellingly about the many tactics and strategies they?ve concocted to meet their goals.

One truth applies to all three winners: They have ambitious dreams for their companies and they actively pursue resources and information to help them get there.

David Miller built his commercial hardwood floor refinishing business to more than $1 million in sales by 2001.

Using a mantra that emphasized service and expertise, he beat out big competitors to snare accounts including Abercrombie & Fitch, the national retailer. That is Miller?s specialty: primarily retailers with wood floors that others ignore becathey?re too small or awkwardly shaped.

After proving the viability of its product in one market, GateKeeper Systems Inc. now aims to diversify its customer base, cut costs and find more sources of recurring revenue.

The Apple Valley company develops systems for vehicle access control at airports, and it is one of the top three vendors of these products. Its systems are being used or implemented by major metropolitan airports in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, London, Las Vegas and Houston, among other cities.

Susan Bjork came into Eagan-based Lancet Software with one task: Figure out a way to lower health insurance costs for the firm''s 19 employees while still providing the kind of coverage they could get by working for a larger firm.

?We had what I like to call the Cadillac of all plans,? says Bjork, human resources director for the software design firm. ?It was great coverage, but we were paying a lot of money for it. What we had to do, and what every single small-business owner needs to do, is examine the employees? needs, what they can afford and then take a look at all of the options, including the ones that aren?t the most obvious. It?s important, especially with how expensive health insurance costs can be.?

Scott Schneider can?t see into the future. And that can be frustrating for him and other small-business owners, especially when thinking about selling a company.

?It?s something we all wish we can do,? says Schneider, the former co-owner of TEC Interface Systems, a prosthetics designer and manufacturing firm that sold to Otto Bock Health Care?s Plymouth outfit in January of 2003.

?Instead you have to try and evaluate exactly what the future will be like for you, your employees and your company if you sell or merge,? he says. ?That can be the most difficult part for small-business owners.?

Large companies have always had more choices when it comes to business management software. But a lot more options are springing up for smaller firms.

For those with a little more spending money, a new option is ERP, or enterprise resource planning, software. ERP refers to prepackaged, integrated information systems that serve all departments in a company.

Historically the exclusive domain of giant companies, ERP is now offered for firms with as few as 10 employees by major vendors such as Irvine, California-based Best Software Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft and Shakopee-based Open Systems.