Focus

When the economy first turned sour, some business owners made the right moves and are now growing their companies again. How can owners make the right moves now to prepare for a coming recovery? Bill Klein, president of M&I Bank Minnesota since 2001, and Margrette Newhouse, senior vice president, shared some tips that they?ve gleaned from recent conversations with customers.

When visitors wander down the bricked streets of downtown Duluth and look over the blue expanse of Lake Superior, it?s easy to mistake the area for a purely tourist town.

But the Duluth area is proving itself to be an active center for business. In July, Expansion Management Magazine of Cleveland ranked Duluth as the 25th best place in the nation to grow a business. The placement shows just how far the region?s economy has come.

Bill King has a lot of nice things to say about how the city of Duluth helped his company, Cirrus Design, find a home.
?There?s a couple of people who just ought to be sainted for the work they did,? says King, vice president of business administration for Cirrus. He proceeds to list the city?s mayor and multiple business development professionals on his personal canonization list.

Duluth?s recent business expansion has been aided by a wide variety of community resources, including the city itself. In the 1970s the area?s economy, which had been so dependent on iron ore mining, was suffering. Unemployment hit the high teens and city leaders knew they had to change the area?s economic base.

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employee Greater Minneapolis Convention & Visitors Association (GMCVA) wanted to see for itself what all the hoopla was about. They?d heard of tempting offers like free rent and discounts on parking.

Small employers might think they have a disadvantage when recruiting employees from around the country. They probably can?t pay as much of the relocation cost as their bigger counterparts can. They may be surprised to learn that many times the ?soft? issues, such as where to hothe family llama and how to survive the winter, are what make or break a recruiting effort.

So says Judy Haydon, who runs Burnet Relocation in Edina. She shared tips about convincing recruits to come to the Twin Cities. It turns out that many services that relocation firms provide are free to the employer. Plus, any prospective employer can listen to a recruit?s concerns and figure out a way to address them. Now, if she could just do something about the weather?