Fargo INC! January 2016

the

l a r u g u a in issue

Want Free Money?

North Dakota’s got your back.

b u s i n e s s

m a g a z i n e

HOW CAN WE

HELP? (YOUR BUSINESS GROW) j a n u a r y

2 0 1 6

//

v o l u m e

1 .

i s s u e

1 .

Six people helping thousands of local organizations reach their potential.

JANUARY 2016 Volume 1. Issue 1.

meet The Team

Fargo INC! is published 12 times a year and is available at area businesses and online at fargobusiness.com.

MIKE

BRENT

BOUGIE

MICHAEL

SODA

DANIELLE

TRACY

ERICA

JESSE

Publisher Mike Dragosavich

drago@spotlightmediafargo.com

General Manager Brent Tehven

brent@spotlightmediafargo.com

CREATIVE

Editorial Director Andrew Jason

andrew@spotlightmediafargo.com

Editor Nate Mickelberg

nate@spotlightmediafargo.com

Graphic Designers Sarah Geiger, Soda Tran, Ryan Koehler

Head Photographer J. Alan Paul Photography jesse@jalanpaul.com

Photographer Paul Flessland Contributors Andrew Jason, Marisa Jackels,

Nate Mickelberg, Craig Whitney

Copy Editors Erica Rapp, Joe Kerlin Web Editor Danielle Wente Social Media Danielle Wente

ADVERTISING

Senior Account Tracy Nicholson Manager tracy@spotlightmediafargo.com

ANDREW

JOE

SARAH

PAUL

HEATHER

NATE

PAUL

RYAN

TANK

Marketing/Sales Paul Hoefer

paul@spotlightmediafargo.com

Paul Bougie

paulbougie@spotlightmediafargo.com

Tank McNamara

tank@spotlightmediafargo.com

Business Operations Manager Heather Hemingway

CIRCULATION

Delivery Mitch Rapp

Fargo INC! is published by Spotlight Media LLC. Copyright 2016 Fargo INC! & fargobusiness.com. All Rights Reserved. No parts of this periodical may be reproduced without written permission of Fargo INC! Fargo INC! & spotlightmediafargo.com will not be held responsible for any errors or omissions found in the magazine or on fargobusiness.com. Spotlight Media LLC., accepts no liability for the accuracy of statements made by the advertisers.

Putting the in

Fargo Business EXPLAINING THE EXCLAMATION AND EXCITEMENT BEHIND THE NEW FARGO INC!

I

n the logo and throughout the magazine, you will notice a !. This exclamation point sums up our mission for Fargo Inc! to embrace exciting businesses and the people who fight for success in our community. I honestly think we could fill each magazine with 500 pages of exciting stories about Fargo business and we are excited to try to get there.

As the publisher of Fargo INC!, my role with the magazine revolves mostly around strategies that affect impact and readership. A visionary role, if you will.

I thought I'd share with you a list of my various responsibilities with our new business publication: 1 Distribution I have been hand-picking more than 5,000 business owners and professionals in the area to send a free print subscription to for the year. That way, we can ensure that the right influencers are reading our content.

The other 10,000 issues will be distributed in places around the community that tailor to people with an interest in business, such as the local college business schools and larger employers.

2 Partnerships To the public, we will be promoting the opportunity to subscribe to all 12 issues of the magazine at Fargo INC!'s website, fargobusiness.com, for $29.99 a year.

Those profits will then go to local media company Emerging Prairie to assist them in their efforts to help startup businesses in the area. Hopefully, businesses will sign up for multiple subscriptions and help build that pot.

3 Editorial Process The content in the first three issues will be curated by our in-house staff and contributors from local organizations, as well as through external surveys. By the second quarter, we hope to establish an editorial board of directors, which will be developed over the course of the next three months. Board members will be picked based on industry, experience and availability. This will allow us to collaborate on editorial content while remaining objective and diverse.

4 Impact With Fargo INC!, we are on a mission to not only inform but also impact. What I mean is that we don't want to just tell a story, we want that story to make a difference. For instance, in our first issue, we're featuring a segment called "Mentor Meetup," where, over coffee, we connect a young entrepreneur with a seasoned veteran in a similar industry and allow them to have a conversation. Not only does a story like this provide a quality read for all of you, it might actually turn the connection into a relationship. And who knows what could happen from there.

I hope you enjoy our first issue and I hope you find ways for them to impact you and your business.

Mike "Drago" Dragosavich Publisher, Spotlight Media

drago@spotlightmediafargo.com

The Entrepreneur

Effect

W

hen you spend time with Fargo entrepreneurs, many things jump out at you, but I think there are a couple in particular.

The first is that they care deeply. About their ideas and their businesses, yes, but more than anything, about their community. You get the sense that the work they’re doing is in service of the larger goal of making Fargo-Moorhead a better place to live and work.

Whether it’s drone company Botlink allowing farmers to safely and more accurately survey their fields, Fargo 3D Printing helping to create a prosthetic limb for a child, or rideshare app Jumpr giving local college students an affordable way to get to and from their hometowns, the companies these founders have devoted themselves to are making a real impact.

The other thing you notice about Fargo entrepreneurs is what an example they are of the power of collaboration in business. Where the old approach often encouraged the withholding of information and discouraged the sharing of company

secrets, the Fargo entrepreneurial community – led by organizations such as Emerging Prairie and 1 Million Cups – is proof positive that when businesses connect and have conversations, everybody wins.

Ultimately, we want Fargo INC! to be a celebration of all things business in the area and an acknowledgement that both old and new business practices have something to contribute. Whether you’re a mom-and-pop print shop, a software development company or a multinational venture capital firm, we want Fargo INC! to be a place you can come to not just for engaging stories but also useful information and resources about Fargo business.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the inaugural issue!

Nate Mickelberg Editor, Fargo INC!

nate@spotlightmediafargo.com NateMickelberg linkedin.com/in/natemickelberg

CONTENTS!

JANUARY 2016

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

38

Fargo Goes International

Read the story of three local companies that are doing work internationally and why they think Fargo is the perfect place to headquarter their business.

44

Local Leader: James Burgum

The Arthur Ventures cofounder tells you three business rules you should live by.

48

What Can Harlan Do for You?

Harlan Goerger, founder of ASKHG, has more than 40 years of business experience under his belt. Now he's imparting his wisdom to other local CEOs.

62

New in Town

Four exciting new companies you need to know about.

65

EPA's Clean Power Plan Means Trouble For ND

FMWF Chamber of Commerce President Craig Whitney fills you in on what the EPA's new plan could mean for North Dakota.

68

​ ffice of The O Month: Heritage Homes

This Fargo custom home builder shows us how their office doubles as a showroom.

72

Mentor Meetup 54

Eight Places to Host a Meeting in Fargo-Moorhead 56

Startup of The Month: Codelation

COVER STORY

10

8 | JANUARY 2016

Why these Fargo developers won't build you a Facebook for dogs.

60

HOW CAN WE HELP YOUR BUSINESS GROW? From the president of the Chamber of Commerce to the unofficial ambassador of Fargo, we talk to the people who can help your business grow to its full potential.

Want Free Money?

Seven ways your business can get free money from the state of North Dakota.

Jake Joraanstad, cofounder of Myriad Mobile, and Alayna Holkesvig and Lydia Gilbertson, cofounders of Outside the Grid, talk mobile apps.

76

​ usiness Event ​B Calendar

Find out about the best business events you need to be at this month.

COVER STORY

H​ ow Can We Help Your Business Grow?

Chuck Hoge

Jim Gartin

FOLKWAYS

Joe Burgum

10 | JANUARY 2016

Thousands of businesses helped. Countless people affected. These six people are helping local businesses and their employees grow. So the questions is: how can they help YOUR business grow?

COVER STORY

​BY NATE MICKELBERG AND ANDREW JASON • PHOTOS BY J. ALAN PAUL PHOTOGRAPHY

Greg Tehven

Tonya Stende

Craig Whitney

11

COVER STORY

CRAIG WHITNEY

providing a shoulder to lean on Helping small businesses find the support they lack

By Andrew Jason

y

OU NEED

to block off a good amount of time for Craig Whitney, President and CEO of the Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber of Commerce, to tell you everything the Chamber does for its members.

13

RESOLUTIONS FOR 2016 Whitney and the Chamber have two main resolutions, which have not changed, in the last several years.

FLOOD PROTECTION “All we need is one catastrophic flood and we're in really bad shape.

One of the best examples from the business community that I remind people of is Tom Budan. He's the top John Deere person in Fargo. He has testified, written a letter and has been quoted as saying, 'One flood that shuts down Fargo, what people have to understand is that it doesn't shut down John Deere Fargo, it shuts down John Deere worldwide.'”

WORKFORCE SHORTAGE “In simple terms, it boils down to this: because of our success and growth, we have more jobs than we do people. What was confirmed is that we have established six or seven committees where we're trying to get input from people.

When it comes to being innovative, how do we be more innovative?

When it comes to attracting people, retaining people, what do we do there?”

TOP CHAMBER EVENTS YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT THIS MONTH The Chamber's events are some of the most respected and best-attended events in town.

Here are the ones you should know about. See all of their events at fmchamber.com.

State of the Cities Thursday, January 14, 8-9:30 a.m.

The mayors of Fargo, Moorhead, West Fargo and Dilworth will share their vision for their cities and talk about hurdles they'll face this year and answer your questions. Register early, as tickets go quickly. fmchamber.com Ramada Plaza Fargo Hotel and Conference Center 1635 42nd St. S, Fargo

While most people understand what a chamber of commerce does, Whitney explains one of the newest goals of the largest chamber in all of North Dakota and Minnesota. (Yes, you read that right. The FMWF Chamber is even the largest one in the state of Minnesota.)

“Public policy is something that is hard for a lot of people to understand, but the value to a small business – and by the way, about 90 percent of our 2,100-plus members are small businesses – the value to those small businesses is hard to measure. But it is real, it is there and it is something that small business people should think of,” Whitney said.

Advocating and educating about public policy is something that the Chamber

has worked on for the last several years. One way they are doing it is by holding debates during election time.

The Chamber has started a new form of debate called the cracker barrel. It's a debate style that takes a large room and divides it up into many tables, with people sitting at each one.

Reminiscent of speed dating, candidates cycle through the tables and answer questions from the public. Eventually, the Chamber hopes to endorse candidates but still have a ways to go before they get to that point.

WORKING WITH SMALL BUSINESSES While the Chamber has more than 2,100 members, representing more than 98,000 employees, Whitney

COVER STORY ​ undreds of people gather under one roof for a night of H networking at the Chamber's "Business After Hours".

The next BAH is scheduled for Thursday, February 4, at the Courtyard by Marriott in Moorhead.

Women Connect: Work-Life RESET Tuesday, January 19, 3-5 p.m.

Fawn Germer, an Oprah-featured, best-selling author of eight books who has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize four times is the featured speaker. "Work-Life Reset" is her new book. She will talk about lessons she's learned on leadership and performance dynamics, as well as how to deal with obstacles. fmchamber.com Ramada Plaza Fargo Hotel and Conference Center 1635 42nd St. S, Fargo Business After Hours Thursday, February 4, 4:30-6:30 p.m.

One of the best networking events is back. This 21plus event gathers hundreds of business professionals in one setting for a fun, casual night. fmchamber.com Courtyard by Marriott 1080 28th Ave. S, Moorhead

says they are trying to do a better job working with small businesses. This fits in perfectly with the growing entrepreneurial scene that is developing in the FM community.

"We have a very strong group of young entrepreneurial type startups,” Whitney said. “I think that I have

seen the established business community be far more accepting, far more interested in what this younger group of entrepreneurs is doing.”

While the Chamber might be viewed as a little more traditional compared to other organizations such as Emerging Prairie, there is a cooperation developing between the various groups to accomplish the same mission.

“Greg (Tehven, cofounder of Emerging Prairie) and I have talked about creative ways to get some of these people who aren't members of the Chamber more involved.

I have seen an interest, and I'm not saying they should switch their focus by any means, but I have seen an interest in them in understanding the value of learning from the old folks, the old fogies,” Whitney said.

The weekly entrepreneurial event One Million Cups is having a Chamber Day on January 6. The Chamber will be paying for all of the coffee at the event, and Howard Dahl of Amity Technology will be the speaker. Whitney especially wants small businesses to realize how affordable it is to join the Chamber. As an example of just how affordable, Whitney pointed out that a company with nine or fewer full-time employees pays $315 a year.

FMWF Chamber fmchamber.com 202 1st Ave. N, Moorhead 218-233-1100 15

COVER STORY

JIM GARTIN

economic gardening This man says FargoMoorhead's impending labor shortage is the lesser of two evils.

By Nate Mickelberg

16 | JANUARY 2016

a

S JIM GARTIN

poses for a photo, he looks out over the Downtown Fargo skyline.

Perched in the sixth-floor boardroom of the Greater Fargo Moorhead Economic Development Corporation’s offices just off Broadway, he surveys a scene that 10 or 15 years ago would have been unthinkable.

There’s a group of college students grabbing lunch at a trendy fusion restaurant, a pair of well-dressed young professionals meeting for

coffee at the newest roastery and a hoodie-clad software developer biking to his job at a tech consultant.

“This is like a second life for me,” says Gartin, who, after spending more than 30 years working across the country in commercial real estate, took over as president of the GFMEDC almost four years ago.

The GFMEDC, which provides consulting services for and advocates on

RESOLUTION FOR 2016

behalf of area businesses, and Gartin have been instrumental in the development of what Fargo has become: a mini metropolis with a thriving nightlife, a flourishing startup scene and a diverse job market with an unemployment rate that consistently hovers around two and a half percent. And while Gartin is the first to tell you that the transformation of Fargo was underway long before he got here, he and his team have implemented a

“I think it’s really that collaborative aspect. It’s bringing entrepreneurship, business, education, closer together in a collaborative nature. In Ann Arbor (Mich.), we had a great mentorship program, and it was really powerful. And it’s lacking here.

And that’s a real goal for us.

But I think the most important thing would be the collaborative aspect between business and education on all levels. I think if we do a really good job of that, it would have a transformative effect long-term for our community.”

specific strategy with regards to continuing to grow the local economy. “(Our mission statement) has really changed in the four years I’ve been here,” Gartin says. “The best

COVER STORY

way I can explain it is we brought a new process in called open source economic development.

And open source economic development is that whatever I have, whatever I’m doing, I’ll share with all of my partners within the region, within the state, within the bigger region, let’s say, because if we’re all working together for the betterment of the marketplace, then everybody wins.”

And while he says he believes strongly in the need for the GFMEDC to continue to support existing FM businesses, he says he also understands that in order for Fargo's economy to continue to grow, it’s important to cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit that’s taken hold in the area.

“We have made an unbelievable commitment to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and we feel that a lot of that is being driven by Emerging Prairie,” Gartin says, referring to the Fargo-based digital media company. “We’ve worked with them really from the start three or four years ago.

I think the first thing we did was help them fund the first Startup Weekend. We’ve helped them fund TedX events. We’ve helped them fund 1 Million Cups and get it started.

“What we’re here to do in the entrepreneurial area is to facilitate, to support, but not to do it. We have to leave our institutional egos at the door and we have to say, ‘You, the entrepreneurs, you develop this. If you need support in developing it, if you need people, if you need financial support, (we can help). But you have to do that. I can’t tell you how to do it.”

18 | JANUARY 2016

GROWTH BY THE NUMBERS The Greater FargoMoorhead Economic Development Corporation estimates that the FargoMoorhead area will need to fill as many as 30,000 jobs in the next four years, in both traditional and emerging industries.

This is where they expect much of that growth.* 2014 JOBS 2019 JOBS TRADITIONAL INDUSTRIES ALL MANUFACTURING

10,406 12.7% 11,730 growth BIO HEALTH SERVICES

EMERGING & NICHE INDUSTRIES

9,216 10,522

IT-SOFTWARE

14.2% growth

ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES & RESEARCH

1,570 1,945

2,838 3,180

12.1% growth

23.9% growth

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

7.1% growth

UNMANNED SYSTEMS

1,632 1,913

17.2% growth

BIO AG

4,640 4,971

Gartin has worked with a number of successful local startups, including Myriad Mobile, Intelligent InSites and dogIDs, but cites one example in particular as evidence of the GFMEDC’s role as professional liaison.

about the Fargo-based drone company headquartered just down the street from where Gartin stands now. “And they spoke at 1 Million Cups, and from that, then we worked with them on getting some initial startup funding.

dinner that was facilitated (between Botlink and Packet), the two of those presidents at that dinner started talking. And from those discussions, a merger occurred. And so all of that stuff – and I want to make it perfectly clear that Emerging Prairie facilitated that dinner – but that’s okay with us because of our support for Emerging Prairie. But if they weren’t there, if our funding wasn’t there for them.

There’s probably not one of those tech companies out there that we haven’t had our fingerprints on somewhere in that growth.”

“Botlink was a company that was really basically in somebody’s house,” he says

“And then we’ve always worked closely with Packet Digital. And then through a

Gartin says he sees no reason why Fargo can’t become the next Boulder,

1,904 2,253

18.3% growth

BIO ENERGY

1,428 1,804

26.3% growth

PRECISION AGRICULTURE

2,458 2,915

18.6% growth

*All data for these tables is sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and Economic Modeling Specialists International (EMSI), with analysis by Thomas P. Miller & Associates (TPMA) and Fourth Economy Economic Development Consulting.

Colo., or Austin, Texas, though he emphasizes it will take time and, most importantly, an ability to fill a significant number of both high-and low-skilled jobs in the coming years. He acknowledges it’s a good problem to have, though.

“Believe me,” Gartin says. “I came from Michigan in 2008 and 2012, which is when I came (to Fargo). Understand that Michigan was in a time where the community I was in – right outside of Ann Arbor – had a 22, 23 percent unemployment rate. So you talk about not wanting to be in that position. This is a great situation, but (the labor shortage) still has to be addressed. Because if we

don’t address it, it will start coming back toward us.

“It is a huge fear of anybody in this market that you talk to – of any size – will tell you that is one of their biggest concerns going forward.”

Greater FargoMoorhead Economic Development Corporation gfmedc.com 51 Broadway N, Suite 500, Fargo 701-364-1900

COVER STORY

JOE BURGUM

starting conversations A tale of traveling, education and tirelessly working to improve your hometown

By Andrew Jason

20 | JANUARY 2016

j

OE BURGUM

– a Fargo native, a cofounder of Folkways and the son of one of Fargo’s most famous residents, Doug Burgum, always knew he’d be coming back home. While attending the Experience Institute in Chicago, Burgum was able to live and work in Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle. He was studying how creative teams work together by working with theater companies, ad agencies and architecture firms. And

COVER STORY

RESOLUTION FOR 2016 “We haven’t picked our word of the year yet. 2015 was ‘focus.’ It may need two years.

As you can see, our products are very broad and wide, and we’re saying ‘no more,’ unfortunately.”

–Simone Wai, Folkways Cofounder

WHAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO SEE HAPPEN IN 2016

he was constantly applying everything he was learning back to his hometown.

“The whole time I was away and traveling, I was thinking about, ‘What can I bring back to Fargo?’” Burgum said. “I think the reason we have this entrepreneurial community is Fargo’s the place to be. It really is a place of possibility.”

Burgum's traveling eventually led to the creation of Folkways, an organization dedicated to nurturing culture-

creators. What exactly does that mean, though?

“Culture is generated, maybe not where we think it’s created,” Burgum explains.

“It’s not created among the high-powered individuals or the top-paid people or even the politicians. It’s created among the spaces where people gather to have conversations in communities and among the people who influence those conversations.”

Folkways is dedicated to working with individuals, such as bartenders, baristas and musicians – the people who interact with the visitors and citizens of Fargo. Folkways is doing that in three ways: connection, demonstration and infrastructure.

CONNECTION

Burgum and Folkways's other cofounder, Simone Wai, believe that one of the

The process to get a food truck license is surprisingly difficult. Burgum would like the policy to be changed to make it easier for people to start their own food trucks.

“Portland, Ore., and Austin, Texas, have really clear and transparent food truck rules that are working. Literally copy and paste. It’s low-hanging fruit.”

best ways to grow culture is to encourage conversations.

They are doing this in a variety of simple ways: making introductions, getting coffee with people and hosting events. Simple things such as walking tours of Downtown Fargo are a great way to connect people to the city, Burgum and Wai say.

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COVER STORY

The mobile sauna is another initiative from Folkways, aiming to create community-bonding through a good sweat. Go to folkways.co/sauna for more information.

DEMONSTRATION

Last summer, Burgum, Wai and a number of other volunteers saw an opportunity in the community in a lack of a large farmer’s market.

That’s when the Red River Market was created. The market was open every Saturday from July through October. The whole idea of demonstration is to discover a need in the community and show that it is possible to act on it. The market attracted more than 20,000 attendees and generated more than $100,000 for local farmers.

“There was very little barrier to entry,” Burgum said. “It’s taking that initiative and being an active citizen at a city level and saying, ‘Hey, I really wish Fargo had this.’ If you hear someone say that, say, ‘Why don’t you open that?’ Or, ‘Find someone to help you open that.’ Or, ‘Let’s make that happen.’”

INFRASTRUCTURE

Maybe the least sexy of the three but arguably the most important, Folkways is working with city leaders on creating a smarter city, in terms of design and policy. Simply changing a policy can positively affect the entrepreneurial scene.

A prime example is liquor reform.

“When you say, ‘Where is culture created in our

22 | JANUARY 2016

CO.STARTERS One of the programs that Folkways puts on that most directly affects business owners is Co.Starters. This nine-week business development program was founded in Chattanooga, Tennessee and helps entrepreneurs get their business off the ground.

The first class finished last month with seven students making their business dreams come true.

Each of the nine weeks is broken up into different sessions ranging from developing a business plan to understanding how to market your company. The first course will start in January and will take place every Tuesday evening from 6-9 p.m. The course fee is $500, but financial aid and payment plans are available. Go to folkways.co/ costarters for more information.

community?’ A lot of culture is made over food and dining,” Burgum said.

“Liquor code is buried in the bureaucracy in City Hall."

Burgum said the average bartender or musician just wants to see more venues, but isn't concerned about the specifics of why there aren't as many.

"When you dive into it, there’s not even a license for music venues," he said.

"There’s no music venues in Fargo. All of the music venues we have are under a bar license. That’s a policy infrastructure and that change will affect a lot of culture-creators.” folkways.co

COVER STORY

GREG TEHVEN

#ilovefargo How one man is getting others to realize what he already knows: Fargo is the place to be.

By Nate Mickelberg

24 | JANUARY 2016

i

F NECESSITY

is the mother of invention, then collaboration is the father.

At least that’s what Greg Tehven and his partners were banking on when they founded their Fargo-based digital media company, Emerging Prairie, in 2013.

Something in between online newspaper and advocacy group, Emerging Prairie not only distributes news about Fargo’s ever-growing entrepreneurial community, they actively participate in it.

COVER STORY

RESOLUTION FOR 2016 “The thing with 2016 I think we’re really excited about is continuing to connect our founders. So we recognize that it's a special personality someone who’s willing to create something from nothing. And so we wanted to spend energy and time thinking about, ‘How do we support our founders?’

I think we’re interested in how we build our internship program to continue to attract and retain talent. And I think we’re also interested in learning how to better tell our community story. And support and develop more advocates who can tell the story across the country.”

“We strive to be a thought leader for the region,” said West Fargo native Tehven.

“We try to open source what we’ve learned and share it with others. We try to celebrate and share what we’ve learned, in hopes of creating more energy and connectedness in the Midwest.”

Lofty goals, to be sure, but then again, you have to aim high when you’re trying to turn a small city in the coldest part of the country into a hotbed for technology and culture.

And that’s always been the ultimate goal for Tehven and Emerging Prairie, to reverse the outmigration of talent in the area and turn Fargo into a place where people want to live and work.

“We hope we’re creating a city that people want to call home, that they’re proud to be from,” said Tehven, who himself was once a part of Fargo’s brain drain, moving away from the area for seven years before returning in 2010. “We definitely wave the banner and celebrate our community. We focus on

telling positive stories of things that are happening, hoping to shift the culture to a can-do attitude versus one where folks think they have to leave and go somewhere else.”

While Emerging Prairie is actively involved in organizing numerous events in the area, such as the weekly 1 Million Cups – an event where early-stage startups in the area can present their ideas to an audience – and the monthly Startup Drinks, which is pretty much exactly what it sound like, their mission

of collaboration and connection, is Downtown Fargo’s Prairie Den. The Prairie Den, which currently has 110+ members, is what’s known as a coworking space, where individuals and companies can work, meet and, perhaps most importantly, connect.

Tehven explained the idea behind it: “We, as a team, have wondered: what would it look like to create a student union-type experience for our community? A place for

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COVER STORY

​GREG TEHVEN

ON WHY 1 MILLION CUPS FARGO IS MORE THAN JUST A BUSINESS PRESENTATION

Emerging Prairie Cofounder Greg Tehven chats onstage at 1 Million Cups with Arthur Ventures Cofounder & Managing Partner James Burgum and Help U Founder & CEO Zak Fick.

1 MILLION CUPS FARGO - the local version of a national, weekly event that allows entrepreneurs to present and discuss their ideas with an audience - has become an integral part of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem in a couple ways, said Emerging Prairie Cofounder Greg Tehven: "It's become a town hall. It's been a gathering spot for folks to come on a weekly basis - we draw over 175 people to hear the ideas, but it's become a platform to share events and activities that are happening. A chance to build community and really develop that sense of place. It's become a front door to Fargo, where all are welcome.

Folks from in the community and folks from outside the community know it's a place they can come by."

people to work, to meet, to study, to host events. And that’s really what the Prairie Den has become.”

With its open design concept, whiteboard walls that members can write on and gigabit Internet, The Prairie Den is a living, breathing version of how Tehven sees business getting done and ideas being shared in 2016.

He cites the example of Bismarck-based CoSchedule – a company that creates social media editorial calendars for Wordpress – as just one of many examples of a company that was able to utilize the Prairie Den as they expand into the Fargo market.

1

"The other piece that's special to it is that it provides an opportunity for one or two entrepreneurs each week to tell their story and to become visible and to ask the community to help them in their journey."

2

“The CoSchedule team utilized the Prairie Den and just graduated out of that space and into the Meadowlark Building (in Downtown Fargo),” Tehven said. “But the Prairie Den served as a temporary space as they grew, to meet their needs in the transition.”

Tehven says that while companies such as his and others working to promote Fargo play an important role in the process of retaining and attracting people to the region, he spoke extensively about what steps the community as a whole can take to do their part.

“I think one of the things that most folks don’t realize about entrepreneurs and risktakers and even artists, for that matter,” Tehven said, “Is when we see somebody taking a risk – whether it’s a new restaurant or a new technology – is to be a great customer. I think so often we can give people our advice or be devil’s advocate, but if we can be a good customer, be an advocate, buy things early, buy things quickly and really help people in those earliest days.

“I would love to see a community where everybody

counts themselves in and says, ‘I’m going to support entrepreneurs. I’m going to support risktakers. And I’m going to get behind people in the early days.' Because it’s easy to get behind someone when they’re successful, right? But founders often talk about that first employee who believed in their vision or that first customer who bet big on them. It can mean the world to someone. And the more folks can get behind those efforts, I think it’s really powerful.” ​Emerging Prairie/ The Prairie Den 122 ½ Broadway N, Fargo emergingprairie.com theprairieden.com Startup Drinks emergingprairie.com/ startup-drinks 1 Million Cups Fargo 1millioncups.com/ fargo 1 Million Thanks January 21 6:30 p.m.-9 p.m. ecce, 216 Broadway N, Fargo

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COVER STORY

TONYA STENDE

rules of engagement Why older business practices still have something to say in today's fastpaced world.

By Nate Mickelberg

t

ONYA STENDE

has a theory.

“I think it’s more relevant today than it was 15 years ago,” Stende said. “We’ve become so dependent on computers and phones that people have lost that 29

COVER STORY

personal human connection, that ability for people to have those face-to-face conversations.”

The “it” is Dale Carnegie Training – an international speaking and human relations program that’s been around for more than 100 years – and Stende has been the President of its North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota franchises for the past 14 years. “(It’s) those skills we teach in Dale Carnegie,” Stende said, “Of winning people to your way of thinking. It’s hard to

2016 RESOLUTION "For me, it would be, how do we – as a community – pay it forward with more gratitude and appreciation? A person who feels appreciated will always do more than expected.

There is so much focus today on what is going wrong versus what is going right. Put a smile on someone's face every day. We need to laugh and enjoy life more. I also think, how do we pay it forward more to younger women in our community and help mentor and coach them?"

30 | JANUARY 2016

build trust when everything’s done over the phone or social media."

Dale Carnegie Training is all about the people side of business. Whether it’s employee engagement or teaching companies how to create a culture of engagement, Stende and her team will go on-site and customize delivery for individual companies, and they also offer public programs, where employees from area businesses come to them.

Stende says there are two issues in particular she sees when working with businesses.

“Creating cultures of high employee engagement,” Stende said. “How do employers keep their employees engaged – and keep in mind some of the research Dale Carnegie has done (that says) engaged employees outperform other employees by up to 202 percent. So what we’ll do is we’ll go in and we’ll do employee engagement assessments and find out where there are gaps. We then focus the training and company projects based on those gaps that we find, to help make the organization more effective.

“Another area we see a lot is with emerging leaders.

How do we get managers ready for leadership or new supervisors ready for management? Really getting those skills on how they can coach and mentor and how they themselves can drive engagement of their

employees. Another growing area for us is executive presentations coaching. For example, if clients have to present for an RFP, we help them with the messaging and delivery.

Stende, along with her business partner Tamara Anderson and their team of six others, have worked with more than 270 clients in the region.

And while she said most of her clients believe wholeheartedly in the benefits of culture-building and that there’s typically cooperation across the board at the companies she works with, where they run into issues is when the top brass doesn’t fully buy in.

“Where we do have challenges,” Stende says, “Is when senior leadership will say, ‘Yes, we need to figure out a way to create a culture that’s high-performing and how do we engage our employees so they’re behind it.’ But then they don’t necessarily go through the process and support it.

And if it doesn’t start from the top, it’s really hard for a project of engagement to really be successful.

“Same thing with leadership – leadership development.

Where we’ll have senior leadership saying, ‘Yep, yep, we need to be more effective managing, leading, having high-performing teams and being more collaborative.

So they’ll send their middle management through, but they themselves won’t go through. And so then there’s a misalignment between the common language of what

we’re talking about with the managers and maybe the leadership isn’t on the same page. So again, I think it needs to start from the top.”

In addition to her work with Dale Carnegie, Stende is active in the business community in another way, serving on the committee for the FMWF Chamber of Commerce’s Women Connect program and as past committee chair since its inception in December 2014. She said Women Connect began as a response to what many women saw as a lack of networking opportunities in the area for female professionals.

COVER STORY

GETTING MORE WOMEN A SPOT AT THE TABLE “I would say the ability to be a more empathetic, collaborative leader, I think is a strength women bring. I think a reason more women aren’t at the table more is that they don’t ask. And so I think, how do we build women’s confidence? We were talking the other day about there’s a lack of women on boards.

Nonprofit boards?

No problem. But business boards?

There’s a lack of women.

“The Chamber was being asked a lot about how to build a network where women can connect and foster relationships,” said Stende, who’s also been involved with the United Way of Cass-Clay's “35 Under 35” program for seven years, “And so women who applied to '35 Under 35" and didn't get in – along with those over 35 – wanted opportunities to connect and learn.

“And so when the Chamber came to me and asked me to help be a part of a committee to start Women Connect, I was absolutely 100 percent invested. It’s really, how do we create an

environment where women can support one another?”

Women Connect events are held monthly around town and were initially intended to reach a medium-sized audience of around 75 people, but they quickly grew to something much bigger when almost 500 women showed up for the first gathering in January 2015. The events typically consist of a speaker segment followed by a chance for attendees to network and connect, and there’s even a private Facebook group that Women Connectors can continue the conversation in.

Stende says that while the events have an edgy, woman-centric bend, they’re still always geared toward development in the workplace.

“We have an author coming in January,” Stende said.

“Hers is on work-life reset – how to do balance. Last month was on mentorship.

We talked about how do women create an executive presence in the boardroom.

We’ve talked about women supporting other women.”

Between her work with Dale Carnegie, Women Connect and various other organizations in town, Stende truly is a Jill of all trades.

“It’s figuring out, how do we create those skills for women to – my personal opinion is if men are on boards, when they get off the board, they’re going to recommend somebody they’re probably closer to, which is more often a man than a woman. So how do we create and close that gap of when they’re rolling off boards, to think of, okay, could there be a pool of women we could develop and train that are ready to be on boards at any time?”

Dale Carnegie of North Dakota 4310 17th Ave. S, Fargo 701-476-8811 northdakota. dalecarnegie.com Women Connect 202 1st Ave. N, Moorhead 218-233-1100 fmwfchamber.com

31

COVER STORY

CHUCK HOGE

incubating innovation Discovering the power of collaboration in business

By Nate Mickelberg

a

S CHUCK HOGE

makes his way across the lab, his foot accidentally bumps an empty beaker sitting on the floor. It rattles around for a few seconds before coming back to rest, his eyes following it the whole way.

33

COVER STORY

The NDSU Technology Incubator, located in the NDSU Research & Technology Park

HOW DOES A COMPANY GET INTO THE NDSU TECHNOLOGY INCUBATOR? NDSU Technology Incubator Manager John Cosgriff explains the vetting process: “There is a formalized process (for getting admitted to the Incubator),” he says. “But at its basic level, we want to see the first draft of a business plan, that they have their business concept developed beyond just the back of a napkin. We may direct them first to Innovate North Dakota, with which they can develop some of those background items.

“From that, we have a screening committee, where we ask the business to come in. We stress test them a bit, put them in front of a group that is going to challenge their assumptions, their business plan and their concepts.

And from that, we’ll make a recommendation to bring them into the program.

34 | JANUARY 2016

He looks up and jokes that he’s glad he didn’t just blow the place up.

Hoge, who is giving a short tour of the workspace currently being used by Renuvix, a bio-based technology company in Fargo, is at the Technology Incubator in the NDSU Research and Technology Park, of which he’s currently serving as interim executive director.

The Incubator, which is one of a number of facilities in the Research Park, rents out workspace to startups and provides them with various resources, such as access to financing and venture capital, coaching and mentoring services, and the opportunity to network with university officials and business professionals in the area.

“What a lot of people like having is just the great address – 1854 NDSU Research Park Circle,” Hoge says. “For a startup company, they rent a small space, but they get access to conference rooms and everything else. It helps to legitimize what they’re doing with their customers.”

Hoge is the first to admit he’s no entrepreneur. His background is in finance and accounting, first as the CFO and president of Bobcat for 13 years and then as the head of manufacturing at Ottertail Corporation for eight, but he says his two years running the Research Park have invigorated him.

“I have to say I love what I’m doing now,” Hoge says.

“Because it’s very different.

There’s a lot of energy in the startup community.

In today’s world, things are done so differently.

And in some ways, it’s taken the young people in Fargo to teach me about collaboration.

“As a business guy, I had zero time to go to events and meet people and network and do that because you’re just so doggone busy. But what I’m realizing now is you need to make some of those connections and meet people because you can connect people, and there’s a lot of powerful things that can happen if you meet people.”

Not coincidentally, Hoge’s change in thinking has coincided with a changing business climate in general, as well as a rethought approach to what a research park can be.

COVER STORY

3 OF THE 7 STARTUPS CURRENTLY AT THE NDSU INCUBATOR

SOME NDSU TECHNOLOGY INCUBATOR GRADUATES MYRIAD DEVICES was founded by two NDSU electrical and computer engineering professors, along with a former ECE professor and a local business owner who wanted to create a company to act as a bridge to the consumer market for the most promising technology-based ideas and products originating from NDSU and the surrounding region.

Graduated August 2012 INTELLIGENT INSITES is a developer of real-time location, communication and workflow solutions for the healthcare market. Founded in 2003, Intelligent InSites designed a method to track patients, residents, staff, equipment and inventory within a hospital or long-term care facility.

Graduated February 2009

Solves problems in coatingsrelated markets

A sharedinterest social media platform

Creates short surveys for health-care professionals

APPAREO SYSTEMS develops solutions that build on innovation in augmented reality and advanced electronics.

The company employs experts in embedded hardware and software, networking, advanced graphics and large-scale computing platforms.

Graduated October 2009

“Research parks kind of were started as a real estate model,” Hoge says.

“Here’s the square footage, and we’ll provide it to you, incubator-provided. But I think, to me, what’s really probably changed is the fact that there’s just so much more collaboration now. Startups want to be around other startups, and there’s so many tools that are out there.

and others are doing additional research before they can take their product to market. The most important thing, Hoge says, is that startups are interested in more than just the square footage.

“It’s nice for them to talk to not only successful startups but those that have failed.

They realize that it’s not a failure to fail. It’s okay if they fail, as long as they recognize it and cut the losses and move on. And I think in Fargo right now, with all the things going on, what’s really nice is there’s a nice support system for entrepreneurs. It’s amazing when we go around the community, how many people are willing to help startup companies out.”

Incubator Manager John Cosgriff adds that the relationship should be mutually beneficial.

Most of the almost 20 companies currently utilizing the Incubator’s workspaces or resources – companies ranging from a biocomposite material designer to a sharedinterest social media platform – are in either the ideation or infancy stage of their business. Some are still developing and refining their ideas, some have university licensing and are trying to commercialize,

“We want them to be willing to be coached,” he says. “And willing to be trained. And work with other people.”

“It needs to work on both sides,” Cosgriff says. “If all they’re looking for is office space, they can accommodate that a number of other places.

There’s nothing wrong with it. We just want to make sure we both are trying to move toward the same goal. Our goal is to help them accelerate their process, through the whole development stage and get them to revenue as quickly as possible.”

NDSU Technology Incubator ndsuresearchpark.com 1854 NDSU Research Cir N, Fargo 701-499-3600

35

FARGO BUSINESSES

BY ANDREW JASON

38 | JANUARY 2016

FARGO GOES

FARGO BUSINESSES

T

here are many businesses in the community that are making a name for Fargo on an international level. Check out these three global companies based in the area.

INTERNATIONAL

39

FARGO BUSINESSES

SWANSON HEALTH PRODUCTS 1.

SWANSONVITAMINS.COM What They Do Swanson Health Products is a vitamin and supplements, health products, and organic food e-commerce store that also has a physical location in Downtown Fargo. Through its website, swansonvitamins. com, Swanson distributes it’s healthy-living products all around the U.S. and the world.

Why Fargo Is Great for Business “Fargo is centrally located in the U.S. So I can get to international destinations without too many changes of planes. Plus, the ease of flying in and out of Fargo is a significant benefit, especially when compared to Chicago or New York or even Minneapolis.”

Doug Gillam

International Sales & Marketing Manager

What Makes Being Located in Fargo Difficult “Even though it is central in the U.S., there are no direct international flights.

That means connections.

Another interesting tidbit about that: it means I can never shop in the dutyfree shops for any sort of liquid because I can’t get any liquids through the “transfer” point in Minneapolis. If I have enough room left in my luggage and want to take a chance, I can stick it in my luggage for that last leg after I pick it up in customs.

But I can’t carry it on because I can’t go through the transfer security with any liquids.”

facts Countries They Do Business In

Distributors in roughly 60

Number of Employees

500–575 in Fargo and the rest in distribution centers in Middletown, Pa., and Sparks, Nev.

What Country They Do the Most Business In 90 percent of business is in the U.S. and five percent is in CANADA. The rest is scattered all over, with most business in Europe and China.

40 | JANUARY 2016

facts

FARGO BUSINESSES

Countries They Do Business In 42

Number of Employees

NINE full-time employees, 3,600 volunteers

WORLD VETS 2.

WORLDVETS.ORG

What Country They Do the Most Business In NICARAGUA

Cathy King

Founder and CEO

What They Do This non-government organization provides veterinary aid, training and disaster relief around the globe. Its primary mission is to make vet care accessible to animals in developing countries. Founded in 2006, its headquarters is located downtown at 802 1st Ave. N, Fargo.

Why Fargo Is Great for Business “Fargo has been an amazing place for our headquarters. It’s essentially our headquarters for all of our programs around the world. People have a really good work ethic and are dedicated to causes. I think it’s great for recruiting amazing employees. Just the entrepreneurial spirit of a lot of people in Fargo has been really great.

From a travel and logistics perspective, we’re kind of central in the U.S., as far as we manage all of our veterinary supplies and inventory out of Fargo. So that gets shipped out to all of our lead vets, who live all across the U.S. We’re kind of halfway between most places.”

Tips for a Business Owner to Make Travel More Affordable “We try to always find the most economical way. So the things we use a lot would be, obviously, we take advantage of frequentflyer programs. I think for flying out of Fargo, Delta is our favorite. It has the most flight availabilities. As much as we can, we try to book on the same airlines so that we can take advantage of frequent-flyer points and things like that. We utilize the American Express Delta SkyMiles card so that we can maximize points that way. We utilize the Sky Bonus program through Delta, which is more for small businesses. For me – when I travel – 50 to 75 percent of the time, my tickets are free through frequent-flyer programs.”

41

FARGO BUSINESSES

facts Countries They Do Business In

UNITED STATES, CANADA, UNITED KINGDOM, IRELAND, PHILIPPINES, KENYA and UGANDA

3.

MISFIT MISFIT-INC.COM

Number of Employees 20

Melissa Leon

Vice President of Client Relations, Product Development & Innovation

What Country They Do the Most Business In UNITED STATES

42 | JANUARY 2016

What They Do This self-titled “boutique digital agency” specializes in creating unique web and mobile experiences and campaigns. Misfit works with a small number of organizations in industries such as travel, sustainability and innovation technology.

Along with the agency, they are also a publishing house and work closely with charities around the world.

Why Fargo Is Great for Business “The sense of community is what makes doing business in Fargo so great. People really care about their city and want to see it grow and succeed. You can reach the creative talents you need much quicker than in larger cities.”

What Makes Being Located in Fargo Difficult “I think Fargo doesn't always realize what they've got. It's not difficult to do business in Fargo, but with such a wealth of passionate community members, they have the resources to push things even further.”

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701-638-0057

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By Andrew Jason | Photos by J. Alan Paul Photography

ADVICE

LOCAL LEADER:

James Burgum Business tips from the Arthur Ventures Cofounder and Managing Partner to help you succeed

44 | JANUARY 2016

ADVICE

OU’VE PROBABLY HEARD OF VENTURE CAPITAL FIRM ARTHUR VENTURES. THOUGH YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE HEARD THE STORY BEHIND THE NAME. Arthur, N.D., is a small town of 346 people about 30 miles north of Fargo. It's the hometown of Doug Burgum, Founder of Great Plains Software, a company that was eventually sold to Microsoft. Arthur Ventures Cofounder James Burgum is Doug Burgum’s nephew and spent a lot of time in Arthur growing up, in the town the Burgum family owned a grain elevator.

“Quite literally, the seed capital for Great Plains was provided by that elevator in Arthur,” James said. “That was where the Arthur Ventures (name) came from, after that town. (This company) is still a cornerstone of the values that Doug and I lived and learned when we were kids growing up, working at the elevator, cleaning up grain bins and shoveling the stinky pits. The essence of Arthur was the foundation of what we wanted to build: a values-based venture capital firm.”

WHAT THEY DO James Burgum summarizes what Arthur Ventures does: “Arthur Ventures is a B2B enterprise software venture capital firm, which means we’re focused on investing into software companies that sell their software to other businesses," he said. "Typically, the investment rounds that we’re participating in are anywhere from half a million dollars up to $5 million.

"Another aspect of our strategy is anywhere outside of Silicon Valley.

We are aiming to COMPANIES be a nationally ARTHUR recognized firm VENTURES that’s focused WORKS WITH on providing a ··Intelligent Insites platform in capital ··When I Work for entrepreneurs, ··Leadpages for them to scale

up. That’s really the mission of Arthur Ventures, to provide this platform in capital and collaboration. Hopefully, this creates a cycle where they succeed, they want to reinvest in the next generation of entrepreneurs and we can keep reinvesting.”

WORKING WITH FAMILY The Burgum family is filled with some of the most influential entrepreneurs in the community, though, James has some important advice for those thinking of going into business with family.

“I think the fundamentals of why Arthur Companies – and now Arthur Ventures – was able to work well as a family is there’s a definite line," Bugum said. "We’re a family and then we’re a business. There’s really no special treatment. I think in some family businesses, you get a benefit 45

ADVICE

of a doubt. I remember the first time I pitched my father and my uncle. At the time, it was, ‘No. Absolutely not.

How much venture capital experience do you have?’ It took a while to get there. Working with family definitely has its benefits because we know each other so well. You just need to make sure that family is family and business is business.”

BOOKS An avid reader, Burgum is constantly reading something – usually biographies – but there’s one book he recommends that’s off the beaten path for business books.

Boys in the Boat “A book about the U.S. Olympic rowing team in 1936. It’s interesting because it’s a book that has nothing to do with business, but what is interesting is the way this guy writes and talks about the team. Just like in any business, your entire team needs to be flowing in harmony. There’s this thing they talk about in there around this idea of flow. It’s almost like in basketball. You talk about being in the zone. It’s one of those things where business can find its rhythm.”

HANDLING YOUR TIME Burgum sits on the board of directors for Arthur Companies, Agronomic Technology Corporation, Intelligent InSites, Catalyze and others. Between running his own business and assisting entrepreneurs around the country, how does he find the time?

“That’s the number one most challenging thing in this job is time," Burgum said. "That’s our most valuable asset. How do you best manage that? Surrounding yourself

46 | JANUARY 2016

TOP BUSINESS TIPS “BE HUMBLE. Learn from everyone.

Whether you’re meeting with a highpowered CEO, the governor, or you’re talking to the guy that’s cleaning out your office at the end of the night. You can learn something from everyone.

Sometimes, in your business career, you forget that.”

“WORK HARD. Nothing comes easy.

I think sometimes you go get a degree from college, you think, ‘Well, I’m set.’ You have to work your tail off to really get ahead.

Particularly in venture capital and entrepreneurship, people look at some of these success stories, these unicorns. They’re very much the exception, not the rule.”

with an amazing team. The right team, the right systems, know your processes that you have to have in place to effectively manage your time. The hardest thing of all is selfdiscipline. That’s an area that I need to continue to be better at. How do you be disciplined about what you do and don’t do?”

HIRING THE RIGHT PERSON So how does Burgum find the right team?

“It’s interesting in venture capital," Burgum said. "It’s a really hard industry to get into because – in the United States – I think there’s only 700 active venture capital firms. It’s a very difficult business to get into. What we look for, it’s not a deep skill set within

“STAY CURIOUS. Ask good questions.

Always be looking for new learning opportunities and new answers. It’s another thing where you can get atrophy.

As soon as you think you know it all, you’re toast.”

venture capital because it’s so hard to get that if you’re not in it. Everything that we hire to is values. Our core values here at Arthur Ventures are really the foundation of how we build everything. That’s what we’re hiring for. The interest that somebody shows in venture capital, entrepreneurship and innovation. That passion, in addition to matching up with our core values, is probably the one thing we look for.”

ARTHUR VENTURES arthurventures.com 701-232-3521 210 Broadway N, Suite 301, Fargo

BUSINESS HELP

MEMBERS OF ONE OF GOERGER’S CEO SOLUTIONS GROUPS: (Left to right) DAVE MONSON (Goerger’s associate), MARK OSTLUND (Sandy’s Donuts), ERIC NEWELL (Stoneridge Software), MIKE DRAGOSAVICH (Spotlight Media), STEPHEN HALONEN (Vercon), MARC RUE (North Star Safety) AND CHRIS THOMSEN (Thomsen Homes) 48 | JANUARY 2016

BUSINESS HELP

WHAT CAN

HARLAN Do for You?

H

ARLAN GOERGER, author and Founder of CEO Solutions and Ask HG, will quickly tell you that his education came from being a pig farmer. Dig a little deeper and you’ll quickly learn that his education came from growing up on his family’s farm ... and growing their seed business by 400 percent.

Or maybe it was the 10 years where he owned his own street rod business, selling specialty cars across the world and using the Internet for 90 percent of their business all the way back in 1998.

It could also be the 30 years he spent with the Dale Carnegie Group helping other business owners.

By Andrew Jason Photos by J. Alan Paul Photography

No matter where he got his education from, Goerger has brought his knowledge, experience and passion to work with other business owners. As the author of several business books, including Bypassing No In Business, Business Expert Guide to Small Business Success and The Selling Gap as well as the founder of Ask HG, a business consulting group, the question is: what can Harlan do for you?

49

BUSINESS HELP

BOOKS

Goerger has coauthored three books.

You can find them all on his website at askhg.com/books.

Bypassing No in Business Through 30 ideas, tools and approaches, Goerger and his co-author Vince Harris attempt to teach anyone how to get more yes-es in business.

Business Expert Guide to Business Success 21 business experts came together to write this how-to manual on successfully starting a business. From cash flow management to employee engagement, it lays out a clear path for effectively leading an

The Selling Gap How do you effectively sell to buyers who are becoming savvier? The Selling Gap answers that question by looking at the science of influencing others.

50 | JANUARY 2016

C

EOs can often feel like they're

on an island. The struggle of starting a business and growing it, coupled with the responsibility of peope's livelihoods, can be daunting.

Goerger hopes to help with that with his group, CEO Solutions.

“One of the challenges we find is that the spouse, the banker, the CPA, even the executive in the company, does not understand what the CEO does or goes through – what it's like to be that CEO,” Goerger said.

CEO Solutions is a part of Ask HG, a business consulting company he owns. Through Ask HG, Goerger offers a variety of classes in sales, leadership and body language. It’s possible that CEO Solutions is the one that he can relate to the most.

“What I used to do at Carnegie just didn't work," said Goerger. "I was basically – what we called – putting butts in seats. The market wasn't there anymore for the way we used to have it. But I did see a tremendous need for CEOs to talk to other CEOs. The idea of CEO Solutions came out of it.”

The idea is simple. Bring a bunch of CEOs into one room and let them solve their own problems. Right now, Goerger has five groups of 10 CEOs each that he meets with on a monthly basis. The CEOs can be a part of the group for as long as they want. His longest member has been with him for five years. According to Goerger, the idea works great because no matter the industry, these CEOs are facing the same problems.

“The industry may be different, but the situation and solutions are common. I can have a conversation about sales with S&S (Promotional Group), with a bank, with Myriad (Mobile), and the conversations are very, very similar. They're all looking for solutions to very similar situations.”

CEO Solutions is led by using the book Traction. The book

by Gino Wickman offers a straightforward way of growing a business, and the ideas of Traction are drilled into every member of CEO Solutions.

“It's very simple,” Goerger said.

“It will challenge your leadership capacity to the Nth degree. Issues cannot hide in a properly run Traction operation.”

Goerger with his business associate Dave Monson, who spent 20 years with Eide Bailly.

BUSINESS HELP

Each month, Harlan Goerger meets one-on-one with every member of his CEO Solutions group at their office.

It’s not just Goerger who believes that Traction is an effective business model to follow. The members of CEO Solutions also believe it paves an effective and simple path. Ryan Raguse, president and chairman of Myriad Mobile, has been a member of CEO Solutions for the past two years. He has developed the Traction model throughout his company.

“To follow a process from Traction that has everything from how do you take your vision for the company all the way down to your daily work to how do you connect vision to daily

work?” Raguse said. “Being able to follow a process, a methodology that makes it clear and simple, has been helpful for us over the years.”

One of the challenges we find is that the spouse, the banker, the CPA, even the executive in the company, does not understand what the CEO does or goes through – what it's like to be that CEO.” – HARLAN GOERGER

With 40 years of business experience, Goerger had a quick answer when asked about his no. one tip for a business owner.

“Focus yourself, focus your people and get the hell out of the way," Goerger said.

Apparently, with Goerger at your back, business isn’t that hard.

FOR MORE INFORMATION askhg.com HG@askHG.com ceocolution.net 51

8 MEETING SPACE

01 ​​Bigger

Avalon Events Center fargo-avalon.com 2525 9th Ave. S, Fargo 701-478-9600

While the Avalon can accommodate smaller parties of less than 100 people, its Millennium Ballroom is what really sets it apart. At 6,000 square feet and with seating for up to 400, the Millennium Ballroom is perfect for hosting speakers or larger company retreats, parties and conferences.

Note: In early 2016, the Avalon's Downtown Fargo location will be moving its operations to the South Fargo location.

54 | JANUARY 2016

to Host a Meeting in Fargo-Moorhead

02

enjoy the view Elevate

kilbournegroup.com ​210 Broadway N, Fargo ​701-237-2279

​The scenery's hard to beat at Elevate, an executive meeting suite in Downtown Fargo.

With contemporary furnishings, a Planar video wall for presentations and plenty of natural light with its large, Broadway-facing windows, Elevate is a great option for a variety of meetings and company social functions.

03

get outta town Romantic Moon

romanticmoonevents.com ​158 80th St. S, ​Glyndon, Minn.​ 218-233-3025

When the hustle and bustle of the city becomes too much, Romantic Moon provides a different kind of setting for your next business function. Located just 15 minutes outside of town in Glyndon, Minn., Romantic Moon's main attraction is the brand new Great Hall. Outfitted with a caterer-friendly setup and professionally wired for sound and video, this 3,700-squarefoot building can be rented out for a variety of company meetings.

04 diy

Square One Rental Kitchen & Event Center squareonekitchens.com ​​1407 1st Ave. N, Fargo 701-388-1137

One of the more unique options on our list, Square One Kitchen offers the opportunity to host a meeting or event centered around cooking.

They offer team-building workshops that allow your employees to split up into separate teams, each of which prepares a different dish for the larger meal. There's seating for up to 40, and they also accommodate numerous dietary restrictions.

By Nate Mickelberg | Photos by Paul Flessland and J. Alan Paul Photography

Great Places

MEETING SPACE

05 exotic

Red River Zoo

redriverzoo.org ​4255 23rd Ave. S, ​Fargo 701-277-9240

​Take your team for a walk on the wild side and host your next meeting or event at the Red River Zoo. While it's probably not the first place you'd think to host a company function, the Zoo can accommodate anywhere from 30-250 people in their numerous spaces.

You can even enhance your rental with various animal presentations and feedings.

06 trendy

The Prairie Den

07

elegant

The Spirit Room spiritroom.net ​111 Broadway N, Fargo 701-237-0230

theprairieden.com ​122 1/2 Broadway N, ​Fargo

The Prairie Den is a great meeting place for your new or established business to get inspired.

With local art throughout and conference rooms with graffitti-covered walls, the Prairie Den will make you and your employees want to get out and make a difference in the community. They also offer super-fast gigabit Internet and a fullservice kitchen.

08

smaller

Element Fargo

​If you're looking to class things up a bit, the Spirit Room is always a great option. Located in the heart of Downtown Fargo, there's room for more than 60 people in your choice of gallery, theater-style or table seating. There's a kitchen approved for food preparation or catering and a sound system and projections screens if your event requires.

elementfargo.com 925 19th Ave. E, West Fargo 701-478-5333

With an urban-inspired design and oversized windows, the Element's meeting room is a great spot for smaller groups of 10-15 people.

There's a 75-inch flat-panel HDTV, easyaccess power outlets and complimentary Internet so everyone in your group can stay connected. And when it warms up, there's even a patio with grills and a fire pit.

55

STARTUPS

Iterate, Iterate

Iterate, Iterate Iterate Iterat STARTUP OF THE MONTH

CODELATION

This Fargo company wants its clients to walk before they run.

56 | JANUARY 2016

By Nate Mickelberg Photos by Paul Flessland

J

No, not the most valuable player, a minimum viable product.

HOW CODELATION WOULD BUILD YOU A CAR (IF THEY BUILT CARS)

Christy is the founder and CEO of Codelation, a Fargo-based software development and technical consulting company.

Building clients a minimum viable product, or a product with the highest return on investment versus risk, is one of the things Codelation specializes in. Christy explains: “We do a lot with small businesses and startup software development,” Christy said.

“We’ll work with people with an idea and a little bit of a budget to iterate on their idea and help them take it to market. So if you’ve got an idea for a startup, you know it needs to be x-big to really hit it.

e

te

STARTUPS

osh Christy wants to make you an MVP.

“JEREMIAH KIND OF BOUNCES IN BETWEEN PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY AND DIFFERENT THINGS.”

“We work with you to get it down to where, if you’re looking to build a car, we don’t give you two wheels and a steering wheel. We build you a skateboard first. Then we build you a bike. Then we build you a

+

+ +

scooter. And then a car. We try to keep things very iterative.”

He uses the example of a hypothetical proposal for a canine social network.

“We try to keep it simple,” Christy said, “Take it to market and find out if what you’re building – is there a market fit? Is there market value? Let’s start with that. And if you can start selling the thing or whatever you need to do to monetize. Then we can step back in and improve on it.

“ADITYEE, IS A MARKETING INTERN HELPING US FIGURE OUT HOW TO TAKE SOME STUFF TO MARKET.”

“TYSON HANDLES ALL THE CREATIVE AND FRONTEND DESIGN.”

“MYSELF (JOSH), I’M MOSTLY BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND STILL SOME CODING.”

“BRIAN'S OUR LEAD ENGINEER.”

+

“Because at the end of the day, if someone comes to us and says, ‘I have a $100,000 budget. I want to build the next Facebook, but I want it for dogs.’ And nobody wants the thing? Us building it’s not going to get you anywhere.

So we find ways to help you understand your market.”

Codelation is currently a team of five, and while everyone has a technology background, they break down into a few different areas. (See photo at left) Christy, who’s been working with computers since he was a kid growing up in Fargo, started the company in 2009 under the name 81 Designs before rebranding as Codelation about a year and a half ago. They started out doing websites, print material – basically anything they could do to get work – before really figuring out where the real value in their market was. They decided to focus more on custom software development and technology consulting.

Most of their clients are regional, though they’ve done some more high-profile work, namely a project for Neil Patel, a Seattlebased entrepreneur who’s founded numerous well-known marketing tools, including

57

STARTUPS

WORKSPACE MATTERS Walking into Codelation, it has that Silicon Valley vibe. A sleek, minimalist design; developers typing away at their standing desks; exposed brick; the whole nine yards.

It wasn’t always that way, though. Founder and CEO Josh Christy said that after years of trying to cut costs by renting out cheaper workspaces, he had an epiphany.

Crazy Egg, Quick Sprout and KISSmetrics.

And while they do work with businesses starting from scratch (see doggy Facebook), Codelation does the bulk of their work with existing companies, mainly in e-commerce and around areas where business systems can be improved through technology.

“We find out needs,” Christy said. “You come to us and say,

If someone comes to us and says ... 'I want to build the next Facebook, but I want it for dogs.' And nobody wants the thing? Us building it's not going to get you anywhere."

58 | JANUARY 2016

(My) magazine is having issues with distribution. You’re not able to get the magazines where they need to be, when they need to be. So we could step in and say, 'Here’s some thirdparty software that would help you fulfill that.' That’s kind of one sector of what we do.

“The core piece of what we work on is custom software development. So Fargo INC! could come to us and say, ‘We’ve got this website. We’ve got our editorial calendar. And they don’t talk together.’ We can help stitch those two pieces together and create integrations to manage that.”

While Christy won’t go as far as to call his company one of the pioneers of the Fargo startup scene, they’ve been active in the startup community for years, from organizing different meetups to working with some of the different hackathons in town to participating in 1 Million Cups, a weekly event where area startups can present their ideas to a live audience.

Christy says it’s just been exciting to be a part of the Fargo startup renaissance and the revival of downtown, especially being a native.

“We’ve found that if you want to go somewhere to spend a good part of your week, you want it to be a fun environment,” Christy said. “You want it to be a place that you want to end up being.

Our first office was in the basement of an office park, below an orthodontist. I always

asked myself, ‘Why am I leaving my comfortable house in sub-zero temperatures to drive 15 minutes to go sit in a basement?’

“And it really wasn’t until we had a couple of these spaces – we found this space earlier this year – it’s not necessarily culture, but the ambiance helps foster creativity. If you’re parked in a space that looks like a library, you’re going to be quiet.

And this allows us to play music and be open.

In some ways, your office space is a sales tool. If you’re pitching million-dollar contracts to a bank and they have to come into your basement dungeon, that’s going to reflect on your company in some regard.”

“When I was in high school (in the late ‘90s),” Christy said, “You didn’t want to go downtown.

There wasn’t a place to be.

“And the work that went in around that 2000 timeframe is starting to come to fruition and really starting to be seen.

It’s great to be downtown. It’s engaging and lively and you get a lot of foot traffic. And you get to walk and see people.

We were in the Black Building for the better part of the last year, and I don’t know how many times you’d look out the window or walk down the street and you’d see five or 10 people you know. It’s a great environment to be in."

FOR MORE INFORMATION ​Codelation codelation.com 866-57-CODER 616 Main Ave., Fargo

FINANCES

WANT

FREE MONEY? Believe it or not, there are several ways for your business to get free money from the state of North Dakota. Check out the resources below to see if they can help your business grow.

By Andrew Jason

Agricultural Products Utilization Commission Grants business.nd.gov/apuc Is your business developing or expanding new uses for North Dakota’s agricultural products?

If so, you may be eligible for this grant through the North Dakota Department of Commerce.

60 | JANUARY 2016

Operation Intern

Innovate ND

operationintern.com

innovatend.com

North Dakota businesses can receive up to $3,000 in matching funds to fund internships in their company. Operation Intern can be used in energy, advanced manufacturing, value-added agriculture, tourism and technologybased businesses.

This is a great spot if you’re getting started with your business. For a fee of $250, you gain access to $2,500 of resources through the North Dakota entrepreneurial center. They also offer classes, business planning tools and much more.

North Dakota Tourism Grants ndtourism.com/industry/northdakota-tourism-grants These tourism grants may be used to build or expand upon a tourism or recreation attraction that attracts a visitor from up to 50 miles away and can keep them there for at least three hours. The grant matches dollar-for-dollar investments, ranging from $5,000 to $24,000.

North Dakota Workforce Safety Grant workforcesafety.com/employers/ safety/grants In order to make your company a safer place for employees, North Dakota Workforce Safety and Insurance offers a variety of grants to keep your employees safe and healthy.

ND Development Fund business.nd.gov/development_fund The Development Fund can help with loans that have an interest rate lower than the market rate. The funding is available for any primary sector business, except production agriculture.

North Dakota Oil and Gas Research Program Grants dmr.nd.gov/ogr/Grants.aspx To support the oil business in North Dakota, Governor Jack Dalrymple started this grant to continue research into safe and environmentally sound oil research.

OPINION

EPA’S

CLEAN POWER PLAN

Means Trouble for North Dakota

I

t’s important to me to keep

on top of issues affecting the business landscape in our metro area. As a chamber of commerce that strives to be both the voice of business and a source of information for the members we serve, we always attempt to monitor public policy-related issues that can either positively or negatively impact our members.

Roughly 90 percent of our members are small businesses. Oftentimes, the largest threat to them, as well as our mid-size and larger members, is excess government regulation. These regulations are often unnecessary and extremely costly. Sometimes, they can even run a company out of business.

To that end, one example is the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new Clean Power Plan, which could invoke onerous and excessive regulation on business.

The background is this: in 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that after studying each state’s individual energy climate, they were issuing an initial Clean Power Plan, requiring North Dakota to cut carbon emissions 11 percent

by 2030. It was a challenging task but one that many in the energy industry and state regulators thought was an achievable goal.

Fast forward one year and the EPA has now announced the Clean Power Plan would require North Dakota to cut carbon emissions 45 percent by 2022, a drastic change from the initial proposal.

Photo by J. Alan Paul Photography

By Craig Whitney

of compliance to allow legal suits to be finished prior to companies having to make the necessary changes.

This is an issue that will not only affect consumers but all businesses, too – especially small businesses. And with such a large membership consisting Craig Whitney is the of small businesses, President and CEO of I am concerned not the Fargo Moorhead These new regulations just for our members West-Fargo Chamber are devastating to a but for our community of Commerce. state reliant on the and state. The fact is dependable power overregulation can put of coal. With extreme measures small businesses out of business, having to be taken to comply with and that is not something that the EPA requests, this will directly benefits anyone. affect consumers’ pocketbooks. It is estimated through EPA calculations We’ll continue to keep our fingers that energy costs in North Dakota will on the pulse of this issue and any increase $50 per person. For a family other relevant issues affecting the of four, this is an additional $200 a business community here in Fargomonth in electricity costs.

Moorhead-West Fargo. It’s of utmost importance to us as a chamber to Many private companies, trade stay engaged and to do what we can organizations and state governments to advocate for area business. have filed suit against the EPA, citing Opinions stated in this column are strictly overreaching regulation. The state of those of FMWF Chamber of Commerce North Dakota has requested a stay of President Craig Whitney. the rule, which would extend the time

65

EMERGING PR AIRIE

B E G I N N E R’ S G U I D E

TO FARGO’S STARTUP SCENE:

5 OT H E R RE S O U R C E S

FARGO INC! EDITION

By Marisa Jackels, Lead Writer & Social Media Manager of Emerging Prairie Photos courtesy of Emerging Prairie

W

FA R G O G A M E MAKERS

Fargo Game Makers meet-ups are the best way to connect with current or aspiring game designers, creatives and engineers in the Fargo area. This is a great way to jump into the indie game design community.

Learn more here!

Here’s how you can plug in:

3 1 M I L L I O N C U P S FA R G O

1 Million Cups Fargo is a weekly event that features one or two local entrepreneurs in the tech and startup scene. They present their startup for six minutes and then engage the community in a Q&A. The whole thing lasts an hour, starting with free coffee and local event announcements and ending with the final question, “What can the community do for you?”

NEWSLETTER

Want a weekly update on local startup events happening? There’s a newsletter for that.

Emerging Prairie sends it every Tuesday, and it includes a comprehensive list of upcoming events happening in the tech and startup world.

Pick and choose what interests you and get plugged in. Sign up at emergingprairie.com.

2 S TA RT U P W E E K E N D

Startup Weekend is an event built to condense the process of launching a startup into one weekend. You start by pitching an idea and by the final presentation, you have a team, business plan, maybe even a product. It’s an unforgettable and empowering experience for anyone. Get more details on the next one, which will be held March 4-6, 2016.

66 | JANUARY 2016

GIRL DE VELOP IT FA R G O

GDI Fargo is a nonprofit organization that provides programs for those who want to learn web and software development through hands-on instruction. Although classes are geared towards getting more women involved in tech, they are open to all.

hether you're a newcomer or a Fargoan born-and-bred, there are many surprising twists to the city. For one, the burgeoning startup scene in Fargo. Startup fever is happening all over the world, and Fargo is no exception. It's been featured in Bloomberg Business, Sky Magazine, Fortune.com and others, for its efforts to create a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem.

1 E M E R G I N G P R A I RI E ’ S

Here are a few other groups and events in the tech and startup scene of Fargo-Moorhead that are great to be aware of:

1 Million Cups is an event held around the nation in more than 70 cities across the U.S., and Fargo consistently has one of the highest attendance rates, nationwide. It’s every Wednesday, from 9:15-10:15 AM at the Stage at Island Park (unless we’re on the road!).

Note: If you’re looking for a job, every first Wednesday of the month Emerging Prairie has a live job board where local employers share their open positions.

4 T H E P R A I RI E D E N

The Prairie Den is a coworking and events space and another great starting point if you’re looking to dive into the community. It’s located in the heart of Downtown Fargo – right above King House Buffet at 122½ Broadway – and anyone is completely welcome to come by. Seriously, people randomly stop in all the time just to have a look around. The Emerging Prairie team works here full-time, as well as Hash Interactive and a handful of other people who are ready to show you around.

H A C K FA R G O

Hack Fargo is a nonprofit that promotes open source data and throws awesome hackathons.

Participating in a hackathon is a great way to meet other software developers, designers and all-out techies. Read up on the most recent hackathon Emerging Prairie had to great success!

FA R G O MOORHE AD C O N T E N T S T R AT E G Y

Join other content nerds for regular discussions on strategy, trends, best practices, tools, professional development and more. Whether you’re a blogger, social media marketer or WordPress junkie, this will help you perfect your contentcreating skills.

T E D X FA R G O

TEDxFargo is a selforganized version of the well-known TED talks. It’s a once-a-year event that brings together art, education, tech and design with a variety of speakers from around the country.

Last year, the event drew more than 2,000 people and, frankly, it was awesome.

OFFICE SPACE

OFFICE OF THE MONTH HERITAGE HOMES

The Functional Showroom

By Nate Mickelberg // Photos by Paul Flessland

W

hen you’re a custom builder, it’s important that your clients see and interact with all of the different amenities that will be going in their new home. That’s why Heritage Homes’ Fargo office doubles as a custom showroom. Director of Marketing Leslie Wood and Project Coordinator Nicole Schaffer recently took us on a tour and showed us some of the unique features of the Heritage offices.

Heritage Homes 1815 38th St. S, Fargo

68 | JANUARY 2016

701-281-7184 heritagefargo.com

Leslie Wood

Nicole Schaffer

OFFICE SPACE

7 5 1 2

3

6 8

weight and the heaviness of the door and see what panels actually look like.”

THE SHOWROOM 1 Staying Trendy NS: “We’ve only been in this office seven years, and this is our third remodel in the showroom.

We change it continuously to keep up with the new trends and designs going on with homewoners. We also do it so that people can come in and touch and feel, compare various wood treatments, view different types of tile backsplashes and get ideas on how to add color accents within their home.”

2 Where It All Begins NS: “This is where clients start their homebuilding journey.

Everything is shown in 3D when they’re meeting with the designer.

The glass doors and wall were part of the design, to make homebuyers feel like they were in a bigger space and not enclosed in a room. We call it the ‘Dream Works Studio’ because this is where all the imagination begins, getting their home created. The four items of livability are flexible living, storage, entertainment and de-

4

stressing. We think about what’s important to clients when they’re building a home. Is storage really big to you? Then we need to factor that into the design. Do you like to entertain? We’d focus around the kitchen or great room areas.”

3 Kids Welcome NS: “Clients can feel comfortable bringing their kids into our office with our ‘Kids Corner.’ While I’m working with homebuyers with design selections, their kids can hang out in this area, be creative and allow the parents to stay focused throughout the meeting.

The kids area also functions for our design center. We’re showcasing fun things people can do for their kids. There are blackboard walls and magnetic paint, so that they can play with

letters and draw. These are just a few things homeowners can do in their kids’ bedrooms or playrooms.”

4 Where Are the Cords?

NS: “So everyone wonders, what about electrical? A common question asked is, ‘How do I not see cords?’ We came up with this option to demonstrate how we can improve the function of your home through something simple like hiding mounted TV cables.”

5 Spirals & Spindles NS: “It’s a challenge to showcase how different stairways will look and function in a home. In this third phase of the design center, we incorporated stairways with actual-size spindles and railings to demonstrate the mix of designs and styles available. It’s a major improvement from the pictures I used to give homebuyers during selections.”

6 To the Touch NS: “The main concept here – and it might be a simple concept like showing the variety of doors – is letting people touch and feel the

7 Are You a Margo or an Elise?

NS: “When clients start working with their sales agent, they take a design profile quiz on our website. This quiz tells them – based on if they’re a Margo, Elise, Claire or Maggie – what their design preferences are, which helps me through the design and construction phases. If I’m dealing with a Claire, I know that she’s very quality-driven and detail-oriented. She’s going to be matter of fact with me. If I’m dealing with a Margo, I don’t want to tell her that everyone’s doing this because a Margo wants her home to be unique. It helps me to better communicate with each homebuyer throughout the build process.”

8 Keeping It Local NS: “Everything’s local. Some of our vendors might have national affiliations – like Pella Windows or Ferguson – but every trade partner is located within the Fargo-Moorhead area. Every single one. So many of the products within our homes are custom-built, not manufactured.”

69

OFFICE SPACE

2 3 1

7 4

5

6

8

9 THE OFFICE 1 Celebrating Homebuyers NS: “So obviously, we’re a homebuilder. The ceiling’s not something you’d probably do in a home, but as a homebuilder – when you live in a commercial space – you have to do some unique designs. The overall concept of the ceiling being lowered is a coffered ceiling, which we do in residential. The metal art commercializes our boardroom and makes it unique.

This is where we meet as a team, but it’s also where we start with all homebuyers as well. They end in here, too. We don’t go down to the banks or title companies.

We bring them here. We do a huge celebration celebrating the build. We sign, do a toast to them and present them with a closing basket. Instead of everyone closing on their home in the same way, it’s a celebration. It’s the largest investment people make, and we want it to be fun.”

2 Central Command LW: “This is our form of a command station in the office.

Controlling all the lights, audio and

even the video feeds. We can control what’s going on in the design center and also the entire office. Another neat feature is the ability to control the climate.”

3 Want to Play a Game?

LW: “This is our Great Game. The top bar is the number of homes to reach our goal, and the middle bar is our revenue goal per year.

We change these numbers every year based on what our business plan is.”

4 All Natural NS: “When they were designing the office, a huge thing was the windows. Obviously, you have windows in your home, but if we did normal residential lighting, it wouldn’t have given us the right lighting to do color selections for people’s homes. Especially with siding and stone, the more natural light we have, the better to feel the realness of what’s going to be on or in their home. So we went with full storefront windows for best results.”

5 Keeping Things Light LW: “We like to have fun around the office. (The toy rodent) officehops. We now have a cobra that’s going around the office. We’re very high-energy, and sometimes this work can be a little stressful.

So we like to add some elements of fun.”

6 Lavish Lavatories LW: “We were very excited when someone first started, that they walked into the bathroom and said, ‘This is amazing.’ It does make a difference. And that’s – again – adding to that comfort of coming to work.”

7 A Home Away from Home NS: “I think (Heritage Homes President) Tyrone’s philosophy is that we spend over half our time here. We are taking time away from our family. So when we’re here, it matters how we feel. Our office is very inviting and homey. It’s just engaging when you’re here.”

8 High Tech LW: “We always try to keep up with technology, helping our processes be faster and to ensure we’re doing the best quality work for the customer.”

9 Getting Some Sun LW: “To add natural light to the middle of the building, several skylights were added throughout the space. Everyone gets to enjoy some form of sun in our office.”

71

ADVICE

Q

A

Mentor Meetup

By Nate Mickelberg | Photos by J. Alan Paul Photography Special thanks to Babb's Coffee House 72 | JANUARY 2016

here's no substitute for experience, and in no place is that truer than business. Until you've struggled to get initial funding or experienced the joy of that first paying customer, it's impossible to know what it's like. That's why each month at Fargo INC!, we want to connect two business professionals from a similar field - one established and one just getting started - and let them have a conversation. Whether it's about successes or failures, we hope the dialogue is beneficial for both sides, as well as for you, the reader.

A

Q ALAYNA HOLKESVIG

ADVICE

JAKE JORAANSTAD

and LYDIA GILBERTSON are co-founders of Outside The Grid, a mobile app still in development.

Outside The Grid is a travel app that allows its users to display and share locations that aren't found on traditional or Google maps. The idea originated at 2015 Women’s Startup Weekend, and Holkesvig and Gilbertson are currently enrolled in the Innovate North Dakota program.

Question L&A: Our whole business model is a mobile app. We were wondering how difficult you think it will be to compete in a market as big and competitive as the mobile app market?

L&A: What about travel apps

in particular?

L&A: We’ve received a lot of criticism for and debated a lot about the price of our app. Do you think $1.99 is too much?

Jake Joraanstad is the co-founder and CEO of Myriad Mobile. Jake and his team of developers, designers and strategists have worked on more than 300 projects and have developed mobile solutions for industries including banking, agriculture and more. He cofounded Emerging Prairie, serves as a coach and participant at Startup Weekend Fargo, and helped launch 1 Million Cups Fargo.

Answer

Jake: That’s a good question. It really comes down to what you’re doing.

Because there are successful apps – often – that come out of nowhere. And then there are way more failed apps than we even know about. Because it can be really easy to get to the top if you have a market or if it’s different enough that companies like Apple want to cover it or if Google wants to write a story about it.

Jake: There’s not a thousand different travel apps, necessarily. Obviously, the big ones are Kayak and others that are just helping you book. The travel market’s not as crazy as, say games or trying to do a notepad app or a to-do app. Those are way more difficult to get into. So I’d say it’s a decent market for an app.

Jake: Tell me about what you’re bringing to the table for that price.

(Continues on next page)

73

ADVICE

Question L&A: What the app does is it allows you to geolocate and pin an exact point where you’re at.

And so we’re kind of focusing more on beautiful, natural locations – like waterfalls. It has a social media function as well, where it allows you to share with your friends. So it’s basically, combined, people are making a map, and then once we get a database of the pins, it will be a map that travelers can use when they’re road tripping. Basically pinning things that aren’t on traditional or Google Maps right now.

L&A: What do you think is the best way to utilize the Fargo community to help us achieve success with the app?

"The question is, what is the focus of the app and how is t it differen ’s from what " out there?

L&A:

What will the mobile app market look like in the future?

D, RAANSTA JAKE JOR & CEO OF COFOUNDE ILE OB MYRIAD M

Outside the Grid LOCATION Fargo WEB outsidethegrid.co

74 | JANUARY 2016

Answer Jake: I think the problem you’ll have is, right now, any price on an app. It’s kind of

assumed that nobody will try the app out by paying for it. They’ll usually have to hear about it from somebody else and be told, and then they’ll maybe go download it and pay for it. Or they’ll try some free version of the app, which I would really strongly consider doing. Or maybe you have the app free and then the $1.99 is inside the app as an in-app purchase so that maybe it lets you actually contribute to the regular map, versus having your own private map, or something like that. That’s the biggest problem with having a price at all in the app is it’s just a barrier to entry right away.

Unless people see an obvious value like, ‘Hey, it’s a movie I’m going to download,’ or it’s a game that’s really popular for $0.99, it’s going to be a huge barrier to entry. So if you can figure out a way to get the initial price to be free and try to convert users eventually to a paid model, you’ll do better. You’ll probably get very few downloads paid, right up front.

Unless your app’s already popular, which is the difficult part to do. Usually, an app will go from free to paid rather than paid to free.

Jake: What’s happened here is there’s sort of a circuit of things you can do to get some momentum. And the first one is to be in the news. But sometimes what happens is – before you get in the news – you end up on the One Million Cups stage pitching the idea.

Once you’ve gone through that piece, you end up either getting in the news after that.

And then you probably get invited to a few events where there’s other founders working on stuff. And the value there is you’re going to hear their struggles. Eventually, you’ll end up at something like, hanging out at Startup Weekend or something where you’re looking for people to help you build your project in a bigger way. Another example would be maybe jumping into the Prairie Den and see who’s working in there. There’s a lot of freelance people who work out of the Prairie Den.

Jake: It’s hard to tell right now. It seems like app stores are going to be the main way in which you go and get an app. The reason is because – you guys know Google Play services or Apple services where they have push notifications in your apps and you can do those functions that the iPhone itself has that you can put into your app. Those functions need the app store to sort of help distribute and power those things. So that doesn’t seem to be changing.

I think the pricing models are going to keep changing. I think ­– right now – we seem to be moving toward a monthly subscription fee on some types of apps. Mostly apps that are bringing value every single month and probably having fresh content or something that costs money every month to keep providing. So they’re going to start to put into a monthly model. I don’t see it getting any easier to compete. There are more and more search engines coming out to help people find and discover apps in the app store. And then there are companies that are building search engines to try and make it easier for people to realize what kinds of apps they’d like to download. ‘Hey, you’ve got these three apps on your phone. I think you should download this app.’ And then, lastly, the devices they’re going to be on probably.

Myriad Mobile

LOCATION 503 7th St. N, Fargo PHONE 701-369-0633 WEB myriadmobile.com

EVENTS

BUSINESS EVENT

CALENDAR 7 WOMEN CONNECT: WORK-LIFE RESET

1 1 MILLION CUPS FARGO

Every Wednesday, 9:15-10:15 a.m.

Join the vibrant entrepreneurial community of Fargo-Moorhead and Emerging Prairie by participating in a weekly session of guest speakers, exciting ideas, excellent networking opportunities and tons of coffee. emergingprairie.com The Stage at Island Park 333 4th St. S, Fargo

2 JOIN THE CULTURE CLUB: WHY CULTURE IS THE HOTTEST TOPIC IN BUSINESS TODAY

Wednesday, January 13, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.

Tonya Stende, Chief Engagement Officer at Dale Carnegie Business Group of North Dakota, will help attendees define culture and what it means for their organization in this interactive discussion. Tickets are $25 per person in advance or $35 at the door for Chamber members or $45 in advance or $55 at the door for non-members. fmchamber.com Holiday Inn Fargo 3803 13th Ave. S, Fargo

3 STATE OF THE CITIES

Thursday, January 14, 8-9:30 a.m.

The mayors of Fargo, Moorhead, West Fargo and Dilworth will share their vision for their cities, talk about hurdles they’ll face this year and answer your questions. Register early, as tickets go quickly. fmchamber.com Ramada Plaza Fargo Hotel & Conference Center 1635 42nd St. S, Fargo

76 | JANUARY 2016

4 ADDY GALLERY NIGHT SOCIAL

January 14, 5:01 p.m.

From January 11 - January 15, the Rourke Art Museum will display the American Advertising Federation of North Dakota's ADDY awards. On January 14 at 5:01 p.m., there will be a social at the Rourke to celebrate the awards. The actual ADDY award show will be on February 26. aaf-nd.org Rourke Art Museum 521 Main Ave. Moorhead

5 AD FED JANUARY PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT LUNCHEON

Tuesday, January 19, 11:30 a.m.

Kevin M. Hoffman is the author of the forthcoming Rosenfeld Media book Meeting Design and founded Seven Heads Design, a network of highly experienced digital design thinkers who operate independently. Admission is free for AAFND members, $50 for non-members and $20 for non-member students. aaf-nd.org Courtyard by Marriott 1080 28th Ave. S, Moorhead

6 NETWORKING TO BUSINESS LUNCH: THE ABCS OF A CREDIT SCORE

Tuesday, January 19, 11:30 a.m.- 1:00 p.m.

Eric Miller of Capital Credit Union will talk about the ins and outs of why your credit score is so important. Registration is required. It is $15 for Chamber members and $25 for non-members. fmchamber.com Center for Scouting, Northern Lights Council, Boy Scouts of America 4200 19th Ave. S, Fargo

Tuesday, January 19, 3-5 p.m.

Fawn Germer, an Oprah-featured, bestselling author of eight books who has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize four times is the featured speaker. “=Work-Life Reset is her new book. She will speak about lessons she’s learned on leadership and performance dynamics, as well as how to deal with obstacles. fmchamber.com Ramada Plaza Fargo Hotel & Conference Center 1635 42nd St. S, Fargo

8 1 MILLION THANKS

Thursday, January 21, 6:30-9 p.m.

Celebrate the entrepreneurial community with Emerging Prairie at their second annual 1 Million Thanks. D Mills & the Thrills will return to Fargo and kick off the social hour, which starts at 6:30 p.m. and the Thanksfest will begin at 7:30 p.m. emergingprairie.com/events ecce art + yoga 216 Broadway N, Fargo

9 MELD MAKERS CONFERENCE Wednesday, January 27, 12-6 p.m.

Fargo 3D Printing, C2Renew and Emerging Prairie will be hosting this conference for makers, creatives and thinkers. The conference will be about how to launch, grow and sustain a thriving company. The day will hold a full variety of activities. emergingprairie.com/event/meldmakers-conference The Stage at Island Park 333 4th St. S, Fargo

10 BUSINESS AFTER HOURS

Thursday, February 4, 4:30-6:30 p.m.

One of the best networking events is back. This 21-plus event gathers hundreds of business professionals in one setting for a fun, casual night. fmchamber.com Courtyard by Marriott 1080 28th Ave. S, Moorhead

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