Fargo INC! October 2016

october 2016

BURGUM ON BUSINESS

Photo s by Paul Flessland

EDITOR'S NOTE

TAKING THE LONG VIEW Voters vote their pocketbooks.

If you're skeptical of this, I'd point you to a 2012 Bankrate.com poll that found that, for nearly 60 percent of Americans, their personal financial situation plays a "big role" in how they vote in November.

The fact is that, outside of the most partisan of partisans, people favor office-seekers and policies that can help them improve their own bottom line.

The problem with this, in the editor's humble opinion, lies when we're seduced by shortterm, status quo solutions to problems that require bigger-picture thinking.

Whether or not you agree with Republican gubernatorial hopeful Doug Burgum on everything—or anything, for that matter— you can't say he's not a big-picture thinker.

nate@spotlightmediafargo.com

From our state's digital infrastructure to the design of our cities to workforce retainment and recruitment strategies, it's easy to tell that the Fargo businessman has spent much of his professional life thinking about the challenges that North Dakota faces in the coming years.

In sitting down with Burgum for this month's cover story, we wanted to give our readers a chance to get beyond clips and sound bites and gain a more thorough understanding of his position on a number of (mostly business-related) issues.

We hope it's a unique look into a candidate's head and a chance for you, the reader, to think out solutions alongside him.

Enjoy!

Nate Mickelberg Editor, Fargo INC!

NateMickelberg

linkedin.com/in/natemickelberg

Fargo INC!'s

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD We at Fargo INC! want to make sure our content is unbiased, accurate and reflects the views and opinions of the FM business community. That's why we meet regularly with our eight-member editorial board to discuss area business issues and trends and ensure we are living up to our stated values.

CRAIG WHITNEY

President & CEO FMWF Chamber of Commerce

GREG TEHVEN

Executive Director & Cofounder Emerging Prairie

JOHN MACHACEK

ANNA HANSON

President Moorhead Business Association

PAT TRAYNOR

President & CEO Dakota Medical Foundation

BRITTANY SICKLER

SVP, Finance & Entrepreneurial Development Great Fargo/Moorhead Economic Development Corporation

Economic Development Specialist US Small Business Administration

DEL RAE WILLIAMS

JARED STOBER

Mayor City of Moorhead

Program Manager Innovate ND

October 2016 Volume 1 Issue 10

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

Publisher Mike Dragosavich

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CREATIVE

Editorial Director Andrew Jason

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Editor Nate Mickelberg

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Graphic Designers Sarah Geiger, Ryan Koehler, Brittney Richter

Photography J. Alan Paul Photography, Paul Flessland

Contributors Nate Mickelberg, Craig Whitney, Andrew Jason

Copy Editors Erica Rapp, Sam Stark, Devin Joubert

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Senior Account Tracy Nicholson Manager tracy@spotlightmediafargo.com

Marketing/Sales Paul Hoefer

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Jenny Johnson

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Business Operations Manager Heather Hemingway Administrative Nicole Houseal

CIRCULATION

Mitch Rapp

Fargo INC! is published by Spotlight Media LLC. Copyright 2016 Fargo INC! & fargoinc.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 fargoinc.com. Spotlight Media LLC., accepts no liability for the accuracy of statements made by the advertisers.

CONTENTS COVER STORY

OC TOBER 2016

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

23

The Energy Man

RJ Energy President Russell Schell takes us on a tour of Spicy Pie's West Fargo store to show business owners just how easily their money could be slipping through the literal and figurative cracks.

50

What Fargo business owners are reading

We asked some local business owners what books they've been reading. From "You are a Badass" to "The Millionaire Next Door," here's what they've been diving into.

52

Office Vibes: BlackRidge Financial

Are Blackridge Financial's new West Fargo digs the most unique in town?

Check out our tour of the building and decide for yourself.

68

We're going to (try and) make your life easier

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OCTOBER 2016

We at Fargo INC! are always looking for new ways to make our business (and lives) run a little more smoothly. We found some great software to help accomplish this.

73

Business Event Spotlight: RDO Caters Taters

BURGUM ON BUSINESS We sit down with Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Burgum for an extensive interview, with questions submitted from area business leaders.

For-profits and nonprofits are teaming up to better serve the community.

Find out how RDO and the YWCA are partnering up and how you can eat your heart out for a great cause.

78

Craig Whitney: the measure I urge you to vote "yes" on There's one measure that Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Craig Whitney believes you need to vote "yes" on in the November elections.

80

Business Events Calendar

Find out what events you need to be at in October.

85

Gofargojobs.com

Fargo INC! and Go Fargo Jobs have teamed up for an exciting collaboration to help you find your next great employee(s).

88

John Trombley's "Seven Benefits Of Mediation In The Workplace"

Village Business Institute Consulting & Training Manager John Trombley has some tips on why mediation can be great for your workplace and, ultimately, your bottom line.

92

Jobs listings

Find your next career in our jobs listings section– in partnership with gofargojobs.com.

Meet the Team MIKE

JENNY

BOUGIE

RYLEE

BRITTNEY

NICOLE

TRACY

ANDREW

ERICA

JOE

JESSE

HEATHER

NATE

SAM

RYAN

TANK

LAURA

In Design & Living's first-ever Luxe Living issue, we tour three area homes that have perfected the concept of living life to the fullest. See the magnificent downtown preservation of a historic laundry building, an Oxbow golf course home with a 20-car garage and a local painting pro's inspired dream home.

SARAH

PAUL

BRADY

Meet Spotlight Media's other magazines

DEVIN

What A Time To Be A Bison - We're only two months into the 2016-17 season and the NDSU Bison are already making waves. From Carson Wentz's blistering start in the NFL to the Bison football team upsetting a Big Ten contender in Iowa, it's been nothing but good times in Bison Nation.

Fargo-Moorhead is full of astonishingly talented musicians who are dedicated to their passion. There's an incredible amount of names and faces who help make the local music scene go 'round. This month, Fargo Monthly met with a few of the many–and some of the busiest–musicians to find out what drives them and why Fargo-Moorhead is such a great place to build a fanbase.

To learn more about Spotlight Media, go to spotlightmediafargo.com 18

OCTOBER 2016

Russell Schell President RJ Energy Solutions

How your energy apathy could be costing you $$$

Hans Miller Partner Spicy Pie

MORE INFO

RJ Energy Solutions rjenergysolutions.com 3431 4th Ave. S Ste H, Fargo 701-212-4835

When RJ Energy did their inspection and report at Spicy Pie—which is typically a full-day process—one of the first things they did was identify the intensity of the natural light coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows that flank the dining room of the restaurant. They then set up the interior lights to dim accordingly.

One fairly obvious source of energy inefficiency that Schell discovered in the restaurant was with a smaller oven that houses to-go orders for customers.

Basically, the power level of the oven was constant, even though its usage varies depending on the time of day. Additionally, with how often the oven gets opened and closed throughout the day, it becomes even more important that it's being operated in as efficient a manner as possible.

Specifically in the restaurant business, faulty or leaky seals often cause refrigerators and freezers to have to work overtime. Schell says this is one of the first boxes they'll check off during a walkthrough.

This can also be an issue with full-size doors found at the front and back entrances of a building.

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RUSSELL SCHELL'S

most common commercial energy issues

1.

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Using traditional thermostats instead of programmable ones

2.

Using fluorescent or incandescent lightbulbs instead of LED lights

3.

Not using motion sensors in low-traffic areas

4.

Old or inefficient heating and cooling systems

5.

Dirty or outdated condensers

6.

Not tinting windows, especially ones that are south-facing

7.

Running a thermostat on auto instead of manual

8.

Holes in insulation, ceilings or roofs

OCTOBER 2016

Schell: "This hood right here is probably the single greatest cost to a restaurant because you have cold air that comes in and you have air that flows out. And it's just continuous.

Spicy Pie has a hood that allows it to slow down based on temperature, which really helps, but if a place doesn't have one of those, it's typically our recommendation they get one."

While Spicy Pie's three pizza ovens are the store's biggest consumer of energy, they're also its single-greatest revenue-maker.

After talking things over with Miller, Schell recommended the store shut one of the ovens down after at a predetermined time each day to cut costs. They also decided to turn the fryers off at 7 p.m., which saved the store a lot of money.

A less obvious cost to a restaurant like Spicy Pie is the placement of cooling units like these under-counter fridges. They face the three industrial-strength ovens that bake all the pizzas, which can be less than ideal for keeping the fridges running efficiently.

"We want to make sure condensers stay as cool and clean as we can. One thing we do with the walk-in beer cooler, for example, is—during the wintertime—we'll take the heat up on top where the condenser is and blow it over to the front door. That way, it lowers the energy capacity that it has to use and also keeps the air circulating and moving inside."

You also have to pay attention to the location of a condenser, Schell says, as a condenser lower to the ground will typically get dirtier more quickly and require more frequent maintenance.

SPICY PIE

Energy Report

After a walkthrough and consultation have been completed, Schell and his team prepare for each client a detailed breakdown showing their daily, weekly, and monthly energy usage, as well as what it's costing them.

FIGURE 1

Schell says that while seeing the sheer volume of usage on paper often surprises business owners, they're even even more surprised at the considerable effect small cutbacks can have on their monthly bill (see figure 3).

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

While turning off TVs and lights when they're not in use might be the most obvious of all energy-saving techniques, it's often one of the most overlooked, Schell says.

Schell says that a quick and easy way to save a couple bucks is to swap out fluorescent and incandescent bulbs, which use 65 watts, with LED bulbs, which use eight. This equates to about a 60 percent monthly savings.

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OCTOBER 2016

"We almost always go up on the roof, too, and see how well their heating and cooling systems are working, as well as their hood fans."

"They have 20 TVs in here," Schell says.

"They were seeing that if they turned those on three hours later, over a year's period of time, that's a substantial amount of savings.

Also, before, on a morning like this, they had all these lights on (in the bar) and were using energy like crazy."

Fargo businessman and Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Burgum says it's time to start treating North Dakota taxpayers like the customers they are.

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OCTOBER 2016

BERGUM on BUSINESS

BURGUM BUSINESS

ON

9 questions from fm business leaders

W

hatever your opinion of Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Burgum, one thing is certain: you can't accuse him of missing the forest for the trees.

The Kilbourne Group founder and former chairman & CEO of Great Plains Software is a 30,000-foot thinker and understands that a complex business world requires complex business solutions. From workforce development to infrastructure to the ever-increasing role that technology plays in our professional lives, he favors a long-term approach over quick, politically expedient fixes.

Fargo INC! recently sat down with the Fargo businessman to get his best thinking on a number of the biggest issues facing FargoMoorhead business now and in the years to come. Our twist on it? We had you—our readers and the leaders of the FM business community—come up with the questions that you want answered.

PHOTOS BY J. ALAN PAUL PHOTOGRAPHY , PAUL FLESSLAND AND COURTSEY OF THE DOUG BURGUM CAMPAIGN

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BERGUM on BUSINESS

#

1

Greg Tehven Cofounder Emerging Prairie

Q: How can world-class internet make an impact for all of North Dakota?

need to be 100 times faster than where we are now.

A: I want to broaden this. This is a great question because internet is the pipe.

How do we get the pipes that are going to handle all of the data that's going to be flowing? North Dakota is better off than most states right now because of things like the Dakota Fiber Initiative and the Dakota Carrier Network, which is a group of all the telephone co-ops that have gotten together.

Right now, you can find a farmer by Lisbon who has 100 megabits going to his farm, which is fantastic, but then you have places like Downtown Fargo that don’t even have 100 megabits, much less the gigabit that companies located here need to thrive.

In terms of order of magnitude, just because we’re ahead of other states, we still may be 10 times away from where we want to be. And at some point in the lifetime of my kids, it’s going to be another 10 times more than today so we

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OCTOBER 2016

The data world is completely changing.

When the computer world started, data entry was simply humans on keyboards, which is incredibly inefficient. We’re at the very beginning of a time when you can perform voice commands instead of typing on a keyboard. You can send pictures on Snapchat and you can send videos to your friends in the blink of an eye. However, the amount of data required to send a 10-second movie versus a text is a huge difference.

Think how much more you can communicate when you’re using data like video or photo. Think about it in the context of a small business: ‘Hey, my pipe’s broken.’

‘How about you send me a picture of the pipe as opposed to texting me that the pipe is broken?’

As generations grow more fluent with the fact that everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket, people are sending more and more data. And the price of sending data is going to keep coming down. The phone companies are going to figure it out and start saying, ‘I can get more customers because people really care

about their data.’ So data-transport prices will drive down.

If we want to have the best competition for innovation, we don’t just put one fiber-provider in the ground, we put multiple fiber-providers here. It's a missed opportunity to redo an entire street and not put an empty tube in the ground to later run fiber through. It’s the simplest form of future-proofing and it costs about a dollar per foot.

You can put a tri-core tube in the ground and run three competitors down the same tube. So the first one does 100 megabits, but then the next one’s doing 500 and the next one’s going to be doing a gigabit.

This is how competition brings innovation.

This doesn’t have to be governmentsponsored. Other than the coordination of timing for when we’re doing the physical work of sewer, water, and streets, we can create an opportunity for low-cost rapid

expansion on the internet side.

Take a look at what’s happening in North Dakota with UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), UASs (unmanned aerial systems) and RPVs (remotely piloted vehicles). We’re ahead in the country right now because of the combination of UND and NDSU. We have airspace. We have senators who have fought for and successfully gotten FAA approval.

They’re flying out of Hillsboro this summer, and it’s not like some little drone is flying your GoPro. It’s a 42-foot wingspan machine, and it’s flying in a 4-by-40-mile zone, recording aerial views of a farmer's crops, and it's collecting something like a terabyte of data an hour. It’s ridiculous amounts of data that people couldn’t even conceive of before.

When it comes time to unload the data, they get in the car and drive it to NDSU. They actually drive the data cartridge down. That’s great for today, but the

future isn’t capturing a bunch of data and getting in your car and driving it to where it needs to go. The future is transporting data by fiber. It's the speed of the interstate versus the speed of light.

We want to be in a spot where we can diversify our economy, create value-added agriculture, value-added energy jobs, new technology jobs and deliver rural healthcare and medicine, which all require bandwidth. We're all walking around with supercomputers in our pockets but still have constraints on bandwidth. I’m around places in North Dakota on the campaign trail where I can’t get a cell phone connection, much less send a picture to somebody. You have to wait and drive another 20 miles and get on top of a hill.

We should have a shared vision to be the most interconnected state with the highest bandwidth. It’s like how the railroads were the infrastructure that opened the state up 140 years ago, and then we built out the highway system.

With this level of infrastructure, why wouldn’t we strive to be the best?

And it's not that expensive a thing to do.

Google Fiber put gigabit internet into Kansas City, and all the home prices went up because people wanted to live there and people wanted to start software companies and people wanted to work from home because they had better connectivity.

It can be an economic driver in and of itself. People believe that if you put a new road in a town, there are opportunities.

If there’s a new road and there’s a lot of traffic on that road, the land on either side of that road becomes more valuable.

And you can open up new businesses and attract all kinds of people.

The same thing applies. If we have great internet connectivity, then why wouldn’t e-commerce companies, for example, want to be located here?

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BERGUM on BUSINESS

Clint Howitz Founder & CEO dogIDs

2 #

Ryan Fritz CEO Office Sign Company

Q: If elected governor, what steps will you take to help the strong e-commerce business network here in Fargo continue to flourish?

A: One of the challenges of being in North Dakota, historically, was that we were a long distance away from large population centers and large population markets. So if you wanted to start a business and your total available market was limited by the number of people who lived here, the size of your opportunity was limited because there are 750,000 people in the state.

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OCTOBER 2016

There are about 75 metro areas (in the US) that have more people than we do. There are 17 cities that have more people than we do. Go global and that number gets much larger, in terms of the cities that are larger than we are as a state. We are big geography, low population.

It was hard to reach everybody in the state, and even if you did reach them all, it wasn’t that big of a market. Along comes e-commerce and along comes internet connectivity, and you can start a business here like RealTruck.com, like dogIDs, like Weave Got Maille. And your market opportunity is anybody who’s on the internet.

This is completely game-changing, and I

think we have to figure out a way to support the entrepreneurs and the innovators.

"Today, there's a supportive entrepreneurial community here. That means a ton.

You can't underestimate what that means."

Amazon is here in North Dakota because they bought somebody who was here. Microsoft is here because they bought somebody who was here. The reason why those companies are here is because there’s an entrepreneur who started those companies.

You look at Steiger Tractor. That was a local entrepreneur. You look at Bobcat— one of the biggest manufacturers in the state, sells all over the world— entrepreneur who started here.

If you want to have commerce here, you have to support entrepreneurs in industry.

It's making sure we have a welcoming business climate, making sure that state policies are designed around supporting and welcoming entrepreneurs and innovators.

Not everything requires state funding.

One of the best things we have going in Fargo is 1 Million Cups. 1 Million Cups is amazing. The last question is always the

same, ‘What can we as a community do to support you, the entrepreneur?’ I heard that and I actually cried. I sat there and I had tears in my eyes.

Because it was like, holy cow, when we were starting Great Plains in the 1980s, there was no community of support for what we were doing. People were saying, ‘Man, you’re hiring way too fast. I’d hate to see a young guy like you really hit the wall. It seems like you’re really taking a lot of risk.’

There wasn’t a community to talk to and support you. Because nobody understood that we were in a market that was growing 100 percent a year, and if we weren’t growing more than 100 percent a year, we were losing market share. We were trying to grow more than 100 percent a year, but to do that, you had to hire and borrow money and take risks. And we were just scraping ourselves along trying to do that, and people didn’t get it. They were like, ‘Go slow, be conservative.’ Today, there’s a supportive entrepreneurial community here. That means a ton. You can’t underestimate what that means.

BERGUM on BUSINESS

3 #

Rock Messerschmidt Senior Vice President & Commercial Lending Manager Bell State Bank

Q: You have obviously invested heavily in Downtown Fargo over the past five years. How important is this to the city's overall growth and how will this impact the state's economic success?

And if you want lower property taxes, the secret is building efficient cities. Because property taxes are driven by the cost of the services the city provides.

A: The point of having healthy and vibrant downtowns is really three-fold.

1. Economics Everybody wants lower property taxes and everybody wants the value of their home to go up. As value increases, communities grow. More population and more jobs lead to demand for housing and that’s how property values go up.

The real driver of cost in a city is linear feet.

And the more linear feet you have in a city, the more sewer, water, street lights, roads to plow, fire stations to man—there’s a lot of cost to spreading out. So if you want to have lower property taxes, you have to have a smaller footprint.

Take our 49 square miles that we have in Fargo—83 square miles if you add Moorhead and West Fargo—and ask how that compares to a city of similar size. Ann Arbor, Mich., and Boulder, Colo.—two vibrant, healthy cities with about the same number of college students as we have in the FM metro area—they’re getting it done

35

in about 24 square miles. About half the square miles that we’re getting it done in.

internet. And that’s why Fargo has ended up on all these "best places" lists.

When you have that, you have fewer roads to plow, you have less sewer pipe to fix.

People who’ve paid property taxes for 40 years and have a crumbling road in front of their homes get special-assessed when the road needs to be rebuilt. You can question what you’ve been paying property taxes for. Where’d that money go? Well, that money went to subsidize growth on the edge of the city.

And there’s a high correlation between Zillow pricing and Walk Score, in terms of where property values are. Then, with higher property values, you can have lower taxes on everybody—lower percentage—because the values are higher.

When Block 9 is done and comes off the incentives, it’s estimated to pay $768,000 in property taxes annually. So in four months, Block 9 will generate more revenue than it has the whole time it’s been a parking lot— for decades and decades. The payback is practically instant.

And the city had to build no new sewer and water, no new fire station, the police are already policing the route. The fire team is already covering it. They didn’t have to build a new water tower. They didn’t have to build a new arterial. Didn’t have to build a new ramp off the interstate. All the stuff you have to do on the edge, which costs tens of millions of dollars, none of that had to happen. And we’re going to have all this economic development.

Think of the 2,000 people at the Microsoft campus. Imagine those buildings Downtown and 2,000 more people working Downtown. I don’t know what we’d be compared to, but you think Fargo is No. 1 on lists right now? I think we’d be on some kind of rocket ship off by ourselves.

There are hundreds and hundreds of these greenfield, one-story, slab-on-grade buildings surrounded by a parking lot. Employees of those places have to drive everywhere–to the lawyer, to the dentist, wherever. It's the idea that we can have employees Downtown who park in the morning and don’t get back in their car until the evening and can still get all of their stuff taken care of.

2. Workforce Development

Once they understand they can do that, it’s a fabulous recruiting tool. Whether it’s Intelligent InSites or dogIDs, the smart tech and e-commerce companies are all coming down here because it’s easier to recruit.

When Microsoft is trying to recruit all the top kids out of the Raikes School of Computer Science at the University of Nebraska, which is like the MIT of the Midwest, they show them the (Microsoft) campus and the next thing they show them is Downtown Fargo.

'Look, we have exciting things happening.'

The second benefit is that when you have the efficient footprint, the city becomes more walkable. When it’s more walkable, young people want to live there. Because young people want to have livable, walkable neighborhoods. Many don’t want the gigantic living room that gets used for Christmas and Easter. They want to be able to walk to a place that has high-speed

If I’m trying to recruit someone to Kilbourne Group or Arthur Ventures, if they're trying to recruit a professor at NDSU, if they're trying to recruit a doctor at Sanford, you know where they bring them? They bring them Downtown. Because they want to show them something that’s different, not something that’s the same. Because if everything is the same, then the recruit is

So my point is that if you want to have small government and low property taxes, you have to build an efficient footprint.

BERGUM on BUSINESS

"They bring them Downtown. Because they want to show them something that's different, not something that's the same. Because if everything is the same, then the recruit is going to pick some place that's warmer." we kind of only have one called Downtown Fargo. But if we had more of them, that would be terrific.

3. Health The third leg of this stool is health, which is related to walkability. The U.S. spends about $4 trillion a year on healthcare. $1 trillion of the $4 trillion—25 percent—goes toward chronic diseases that include heartrelated issues and diabetes, which are often related to inactivity.

Experts used to tell you that you have to work out vigorously 20 minutes X times a week. Studies now say that if you just walk more, it has virtually the same effect as all of this working out. Yet we spent so much energy trying to design communities to eliminate—not minimize walking, eliminate walking—that it's to the point now where ifI’m an employee and if I can’t park right by the door, then I don’t want to work somewhere.

going to pick some place that’s warmer.

There’s a book written by Gallup Chairman Jim Clifton called “The Coming Jobs War.” The principle is pretty solid, which is that Millennials pick what city they want to live in first and then they find a job.

something out. I’ve met a bunch of people, including a guy who’s down at the Red River Market selling homemade hot sauce.

He used to work at Microsoft, was getting ready to leave, and then came Downtown and was like, ‘Wow, this is a cool thing. I’m going to try and figure out a way to start a business and stay here.’

They want to pick a community. They pick up magazines and read, ‘What are the top 10 cities to live in in the Rockies?' or 'What are the top 10 cities in the Midwest?' Pick one and go there and see if you can figure

The only way communities really differentiate themselves anymore is through their walkable, vibrant neighborhoods.

It would be great if we had 10 walkable, vibrant neighborhoods. Turns out, right now,

Downtown, people walk. They walk all 12 months. They walk to lunch, they walk back from lunch, they walk wherever. There is a correlation.

When people criticize the United States for having higher healthcare costs than other countries, they’re not factoring in that we’ve spent 70 years designing cities around automobiles instead of people.

If we want to have lower-cost healthcare, which is a big issue, if we want to have a workforce that we can retain, and we want to have lower property taxes, then we have to build smart, vibrant cities. Those things all go together.

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BERGUM on BUSINESS

4 #

Patrick Chaffee

Executive Vice President & Managing Director of Wealth Management Division Bell State Bank

Q: How do you plan to interact differently with the business community than previous administrations?

When people regain that time to create jobs—when they have more money to create jobs and are not sending their checks to Bismarck or Washington, D.C.—that’s when the economy is going to flourish.

A: One of the things Brent (Sanford, lieutenant governor running mate) and I are running on is this idea of treating taxpayers like customers. Part of what we have to do is think through—in all the places where government touches business—how we can make the process as streamlined and positive as possible. Because any time you’re messing around with red tape, that’s time you aren’t spending attracting clients, coaching team members or creating a new job. You basically want to take that regulatory headache off of business owners so that they can innovate and be entrepreneurs and do the things they do to create jobs.

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OCTOBER 2016

I've been involved in making payroll every two weeks for the last 33 years. I've created a lot of jobs over that time period.

I've also had a chance in the later part of my life to be involved in philanthropy. And I understand that the best philanthropic contribution people can make is creating jobs. That’s the gift that keeps on giving.

That’s the contribution that gives to the entire community. And I think we have to honor the entrepreneurs and risk-takers and the people who are out there doing the job-creation.

If elected, we really want to engage the business community because we recognize that competition makes you better. How do we innovate? How do we get better at everything we’re doing? Well, many of the problems in government exist because

there isn’t a whole lot of competition driving improvement in the delivery of government services. And that means that there are no forces driving innovation and cost-efficiency.

In state government, that’s going to mean having discussions and getting input from the people who are actually delivering the services. Because if people are actually delivering the services, they can probably tell you what’s wrong. They can say, ‘Hey, this is what’s goofy, but this is the way I'm told to do my job. This is the way the rules work.’

It’s also from customers. Many of the product innovation ideas we had (at Great Plains Software) came from customers. It's the same thing here.

How do we create those listening systems in government where improvements can be guided by feedback from the public?

If you’re in a monopoly, you don’t have much of an incentive to listen and adapt because you can get by by just doing things the way you did them yesterday.

The exciting part is that there is a form of competition. It’s North Dakota versus the other 49 states.

We're all in it together.

We're all part of the

United States of America. But when we’re competing for talent and jobs and capital...

People are mobile in this country. They can decide where they’re going to live. Why not have this be the best place to live and the best place to work and the best place to start a business? There’s nothing stopping us from doing that. If we want to get the federal government off our back, there’s nothing stopping us from being a leader in that space.

"I understand that the best philanthropic contribution people can make is creating jobs.

That's the gift that keeps on giving. That's the contribution that gives to the entire community."

We're fortunate in North Dakota. We had Ed Schafer, we had John Hoeven, we had Jack Dalrymple.

We’ve had 24 years of business leaders in the governor's office.

And that’s one of the reasons I’m running for governor is—Ed Schafer, his first elected office was governor.

John Hoeven, his first elected office was governor. That doesn't happen in other states.

It can happen here.

I’ll continue to be very pro-business and pro-free market. The differentiator I can bring to North Dakota is an understanding of how technology is affecting every industry—how it’s affecting energy, how it’s affecting ag, how it’s affecting how we should be designing cities.

BERGUM on BUSINESS

Dan Hicks Commercial Realtor Property Resources Group

5 #

Q: Over the past couple years, the biggest issue I have heard about from business owners is difficulty in finding employees, from general laborers to skilled professionals. It is one of the major issues I see stifling the area's growth. as governor, how would you address the issue?

A: Part of it is recruiting people and part of it has to do with education. We have to shift education so people learn the skills needed to thrive in the 21st-century economy. We can’t have an entire K-12 system that’s built solely around memorization and regurgitation of answers. Those aren’t the skills needed when everyone has a smartphone in their pocket.

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OCTOBER 2016

My son is a senior in high school, and my other two kids just came through high school. The high school they just experienced looked a lot like what I experienced 40 years ago in Arthur, N.D.: a teacher and some books and some knowledge transfer. You go back to the one-room schoolhouse on the prairie, and you see something similar: a teacher transferring knowledge to eight kids. In a lot of ways, we’re doing it the same as we did 120 years ago.

Yet what’s available today, which wasn’t available when I was growing up in Arthur, is access to all of the world’s information and most of it for free. When you have access to the world’s information for free, why are we doing bond issues to build school buildings to continue doing education the way we’ve

always done it? We're spending all this money on bricks and mortar, and it’s not necessarily producing better outcomes for students.

"We can't have an entire K-12 system that's built solely around memorization and regurgitation of answers.

Those aren't the skills needed when everyone has a smartphone in their pocket."

How do we do project-based learning? How do we let kids collaborate? When you hire someone at a job, everyone works together, right?

Nobody's solo. You have a deadline, you have a project, you bring in all the different resources.

We’re not teaching them the skills on how to do collaborative-, team- and projectbased learning. Sports and the arts are probably teaching kids more of what they need than other areas of the classroom right now because it’s a team-based approach.

We have to really rethink how we educate.

But we have a chance. In North Dakota, it's very exciting. We have 750,000 people.

We can be more nimble, we can be faster and we can adapt more quickly than other places.

And there can be collaboration between the teachers union, the business community

and the department of public instruction.

Ted Dintersmith, funder of the film 'Most Likely to Succeed,' talks about the need to revamp education. He says that he’s never seen a state like North Dakota where those three groups are all working together. We can be very optimistic that we can get this thing figured out before everybody else, and we could be the leader in creating skills for the 21st century for kids.

Because this workforce problem isn’t only here. It’s everywhere in the country.

Everybody has the issue that the skills people are learning in school don’t align with the skills needed to build these newage businesses.

That’s why e-commerce businesses are having problems, that’s why Microsoft always has a bunch of jobs open. The same thing in healthcare. We’re not producing enough healthcare professionals here.

Education really has to be focused on creating the skills we need for tomorrow, not the skills for yesterday.

BERGUM on BUSINESS

6 #

The Office of Sanford Health Policy

Q: Healthcare education programming and infrastructure need to be addressed to meet skyrocketing workforce challenges.

How would you help grow more healthcare educational opportunities for college students in North Dakota?

A: I think Sanford here in Fargo has, what, 600 jobs available? Altru up in Grand Forks has 60-some jobs available. It's a constant thing. We’ve expanded the (UND) medical school, which I believe went from 62 to 78 students per class. We’re only in the second year of that.

There’s going to be a big shortage of doctors. With the nursing shortage we have right now, NDSU wants to expand their nursing program. But if the path is having to build a new building before they expand the program, then that's four years away. How do you get the certifications? How do you get the skill sets? How do you do it faster?

None of it’s fast enough.

We also have an aging population that’s requiring more care and nursing, and direct human-to-human care isn’t something that can be outsourced. So from that standpoint, it’s a great career because demand is going to be there for a long time.

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We have to think again about how technology affects healthcare because part of the context of the need for all these positions is institutionalized care, where you’re either in the hospital or you’re in a long-term care facility. And if we're taking care of people in their own homes, which is where the elderly population wants to remain as long as they can be independent and safe, then how does technology play a role?

Family members today provide probably as much in-home healthcare as anyone. And they’re unpaid and untrained. So how do we train up the family members who are providing care for the older people? And in a rural state like ours, sometimes the answer we have for Fargo isn’t going to work for a smaller town. We have to make sure we’re thinking about the whole state when we address these issues.

We've touched on an area here where we have supply-and-demand constraints, and part of the reason we have that is because the federal government is too involved and is distorting these markets.

The market forces themselves aren’t resolving all of the issues because of the tremendous overregulation in healthcare, which creates a lot of inefficiencies and increases in costs.

BERGUM on BUSINESS

Bob Majkrzak

7 #

President & CEO Red River Commodities

Q: Regulations are major hurdles in the supply chain and in adding cost to products. What is your position on issues such as WOTUS (Waters of the US), GMO labeling and the Food Safety & Modernization Act?

pass a law to fix it.’ This is coming from the current (presidential) administration the last eight years—working through agencies like the EPA, food safety—saying, ‘Here’s a new rule. We think this new rule is going to apply. We’re issuing a new rule.’

A: This is another area that could fall under the category of federal overreach.

Understand that in this question, some of these regulations are not coming to the legislature. This is not coming through the Senate and the House where a legislator is saying, ‘My constituents have come to me, and there’s a problem. We need to

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So when I say ‘federal overreach,’ it’s not some buzzword. It’s agencies creating rules and regulations like they’re law, but they’ve never gone through Congress and been passed as a law. I don’t think the original intent of these agencies was to be their own law-making organizations, and that’s where a lot of the cost is coming from. They think they’re solving a problem and they’re actually creating problems.

The Waters of the USA is particularly

"When I say 'federal overreach,' it's not some buzzword. It's agencies creating rules and regulations like they're law, but they've never gone through Congress and been passed as a law."

western North Dakota on lignite mines from 30 years ago and you can’t tell because it’s been reclaimed back to farmland. They save the topsoil, put it back, contour it, and it looks like it did before.

egregious because it would effectively turn almost every pond in North Dakota into something that’s a federally managed waterway. If that’s the case, then basically every farmer is going to have to have a direct relationship with the federal government to decide whether he can farm around his slough or not. Some of this stuff, when you explain to people what it really is, they’re like, ‘Well that can’t be.

That’s too goofy.’

Some of the regulations for the coal industry that are hitting North Dakota were designed for people in West Virginia who were moving a mountaintop and pushing it into a stream. Whereas, you drive in

Different topography, different places. If some place else is recovering coal at a mile deep and we’re doing it at about 40 feet deep, why try to apply the same rule to both?

The whole point of having 50 states is that each state should be a platform of innovation as opposed to us being one monolithic thing where the federal government decides everything.

Maybe there’s going to be a time in the next couple of decades where there can be some seriously meaningful rebalancing of the federal-state power dynamic because the status quo isn’t working. The federal government comes up with mandates, which are unfunded, and thus put a burden

onto cities, counties and states. And then they fine you if you don’t do it. By creating the mandate, they’re basically directing how local people are supposed to spend locally generated taxes. That’s offensive and wrong.

Take a look at where we’ve had huge increases. Tuition: rising faster than inflation because of the $1.3 trillion in student loans. Name another area that’s growing faster than inflation. Healthcare costs are going way up. Where’s the government really involved? They’re involved in healthcare with a bunch of mandates while simultaneously providing subsidies for insurance. So they’re pushing a lot of loose, free money at healthcare and then guess what? The part that’s still in the private market keeps raising their prices.

You cannot eliminate price forces from a market and have the market function well. But the federal government keeps forgetting that.

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BERGUM on BUSINESS

8 #

Dean Gorder

Executive Director North Dakota Trade Office (NDTO)

Q: What role do international sale and trade play in the diversification and modernization of the North Dakota economy?

A: Our two big industries in the state are energy and agriculture, and the majority of the production of those two things leaves the state and a lot of it leaves the country.

Our value-added manufacturing—farm machinery, in particular—is going all over the world. Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Australia, everywhere. So one thing that we have to continue to build in our North Dakota businesses is an understanding of international trade—how to do it, where to do it and how to be effective at doing it.

It’s critical.

When Great Plains (Software) was acquired in 2001, we had 2,000 team members and 400 of them were located outside of North America. If you want to build a really diversified customer base, you go global.

And so it needs to continue to play a very important role going forward.

Are we teaching kids enough when they’re

"One thing that we have to continue to build in our North Dakota businesses is an understanding of international trade_how to do it, where to do it and how to be effective at doing it." coming out of NDSU, UND and the other colleges? Because I'll bet you global trade didn’t get mentioned once in K-12.

These kids in a small town are going home, and every crop they’re driving by is going to India, China or somewhere else around the world. No one talks about the supply chain that we’re participating in, but we should be.

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BERGUM on BUSINESS

Randy Martinson

Owner & Market Analyst Martinson Ag

9 #

Q: With the recent issues the North Dakota economy has seen with the decrease in crude-oil prices and agricultural markets, what change would you make to the state's budget to make North Dakota's revenue less dependent on strong oil and ag prices? With commodity markets being very cyclical and hard to predict, how will future budgets accommodate this issue?

One issue we intend to address when we get to Bismarck is figuring out how to balance the budget without raising taxes.

That’s job one, and it’s going to be a big job. The general fund last time was $6 billion. Revenue might be coming in this time at $1.5 billion below that.

A: To be less dependent on strong oil and ag prices, you’re really talking about changing the state’s revenue. Changing the state’s revenue involves changing the state’s tax policy. I don’t think we have a revenue problem, I think we have a spending problem.

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No legislature has ever faced having to remove this much cost out of a general fund in the history of the state. It will be a big, allconsuming thing, but I certainly think there’s a way to do it by right-sizing government, streamlining what we’re doing and setting priorities. That means everything has to be on the table. It's going to be a very interesting session.

"Everybody assumes more money equals better, less money equals worse, but we have to unhinge ourselves from that thinking."

We have to do a better job of forecasting and a better job of risk mitigation. The state’s revenue is very dependent on high oil and ag prices, and when the prices were high, we didn’t do any hedging.

Business hedges. My family's business grain elevator­hedges every night. You can’t be in the business of commodities if you’re not doing hedging. The state has become a commodity-dependent business and wasn’t doing any risk management. I think it’s something we have to look at to help dampen some of the cycles by using the tools that are available.

We’re going to end up with a balanced budget, but the question is: how do we have a balanced budget that still produces the

most positive impact for the dollars spent?

We’ve spent more and more on education every year. If there aren’t more kids who are high school- and college-ready, then if the budget goes down, I don’t see what the problem is. Because the budget going up didn’t make it better. Is the budget going down going to make it worse?

Everybody assumes more money equals better, less money equals worse, but we have to unhinge ourselves from that thinking. The biggest change we’re going to face is getting people to unhinge themselves from this idea that more money equals better. Because actually better ideas equal better and better processes equal better. If more money equaled better, then we wouldn’t have any problems because we’ve spent so much money on everything.

As we look forward, my vision for North Dakota is to diversify our economy, which will take time but pays great dividends. I know that North Dakota talent can compete with anyone in the world. At Great Plains/ Microsoft, we hired thousands of people from more than 220 towns and cities across North Dakota, and they delivered the best products and services in the world.

By supporting our entrepreneurs, innovators, and companies committed to growth, we will expand our tax base and create a stronger, more diversified economy for North Dakota that will create great jobs and attract and retain talented people for the future.

What Fargo business owners are

In a way, reading is a kind of admission that, as much as it sometimes feels like it, we don't have it all figured out.

READING

Bill Gates reads upward of 50 books a year. Mark Cuban reads more than three hours a day.

Mark Zuckerberg challenged himself to read a book every two weeks last year.

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THE THIRD WAVE

By Steve Case One of America’s most accomplished entrepreneurs—a pioneer who made the internet part of everyday life and orchestrated the largest merger in the history of business—shares a roadmap for how anyone can succeed in a world of rapidly changing technology.

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If some of the most successful and prominent business leaders in the world are continuously looking elsewhere for knowledge and advice, there's probably no reason why you shouldn't be, too.

Here are 10 recommendations from business owners right here in Fargo-Moorhead.

By Nate Mickelberg Photo by Paul Flessland Special thanks to Zandbroz Variety Note: all excerpts from Amazon.com book summaries

THE POWER OF HABIT

By Charles Duhigg Pulitzer Prize–winning business reporter Charles Duhigg takes you to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. At its core, "The Power of Habit" contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

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3 TRIBES

By Seth Godin The web can do amazing things, but it can't provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals—people just like you who have passion about something.

The explosion in tribes means that anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at their fingertips.

4 THE LEAN STARTUP

By Eric Ries Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, "The Lean Startup" offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously and to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in an age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

5 MINDFUL WORK

By David Gelles "Mindful Work" is the first book to explain how all sorts of businesses and any kind of worker can benefit from meditation, yoga and other mindful techniques.

Mindfulness lowers stress, increases mental focus and alleviates depression among workers. It has also benefited companies that have adopted it—from the millions of dollars Aetna has saved in healthcare costs to the ways Patagonia has combined leadership in its market with a pervasively mindful outlook.

THE MILLIONAIRE NEXT DOOR

By Thomas J. Stanley The best-selling "The Millionaire Next Door" identifies seven common traits that show up again and again among those who have accumulated wealth. Most of the truly wealthy in this country don't live in Beverly Hills or on Park Avenue. They live next door.

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7 YOU ARE A BADASS

By Jen Sincero In this New York Times bestseller, Jen Sincero serves up 27 bite-sized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice, easy exercises and the occasional swear word. If you're ready to make some serious changes, "You Are a Badass" will help you identify and change the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors that stop you from getting what you want, blast past your fears so you can take big, exciting risks, figure out how to make some damn money already, learn to love yourself and others, and set big goals and reach them.

8 THINK AND GROW RICH

By Napoleon Hill "Think and Grow Rich" is a 1937 personaldevelopment and self-help book inspired by a suggestion from Scottish-American business magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. While its title implies that the book deals with how to attain monetary wealth, the philosophy taught in the book can be used to help people succeed in all lines of work and to do or be almost anything they want.

9 THE NEW ONE MINUTE MANAGER

By Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson For decades, "The One Minute Manager" has helped millions achieve more successful professional and personal lives.

While the principles it lays out are timeless, our world has changed drastically since the book’s publication. "The New One Minute Manager" introduces the book’s powerful, important lessons to a new generation. In a concise, easy-to-read story, the authors teach readers three very practical secrets about leading others and explain why these techniques continue to work so well.

10 WHO MOVED MY CHEESE?

By Spencer Johnson Most people are fearful of change because they don't believe they have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Dr. Spencer Johnson shows us that what matters most is the attitude we have about change.

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By Nate Mickelberg | Photos by Paul Flessland

OFFICE VIBES: BlackRidge Financial

Mark Anderson President BlackRidge Financial

855 26th Ave. E, West Fargo 52

OCTOBER 2016

blackridgebank.com

701-364-9050

BlackRidge's new twostory office, which houses its loan documentation, mortgage underwriting and processing, management, HR and insurance departments, is a bit of a dream come true for Anderson and his partner Craig Weiss.

The eccentric, fast-talking president of BlackRidge is the self-described "mad scientist" behind the space's design, and from the time his mental machinations for the building's blueprint started a few years ago, he knew that he wanted the company's new digs to be an experience for customers and employees alike.

"We said, 'Let's do something different,'" Anderson says. "Because we're different. And we want to have some fun with it and have a place that's really fun to be a part of and is truly unique." Weiss agreed and told Anderson to run with it.

To understand the origins of this one-of-a-kind building, you need to go back to a trip Anderson took a few years ago to visit his brother in Rhode Island.

They passed a couple different repurposed buildings—one an industrial-age iron foundry-turnedbar and the other a riverside textile factory-turned-office—and Anderson actually said out loud, "We need something like this for our building."

From the reclaimed floors to the exposed ceilings, Anderson had his muse.

"I said to my brother, 'I have a really wild idea,'" Anderson recalls. "We need a building. What if it were this space where at one point in time there was an iron foundry and a textile mill, and somebody bought them, tore the walls down and built this thing in between and made it into a railroad depot?'"

Not literally, of course, as the building was going to be built from scratch, but that was the feeling he wanted to evoke.

To gain a proper appreciation for the BlackRidge building, you need to first understand the lengths that Anderson went to in making everything fit together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. There's no part of the space that doesn't contain some kind of symbolism or any number of hidden gems. As we move along our tour, we'll include just a few that he pointed out to us, though you'll probably spot a few on your own.

EASTER EGGS "2112" is the name of a concept album by the Canadian band Rush, Anderson's favorite group and one he's seen in concert 46 times. 2112 appears numerous times throughout the space because, as Anderson puts it, "All things revolve around 2112."

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The first of three original paintings done

by Bemidji artist Nicholas Jackson can be found in the building's lobby. It's called "The Factory" and is meant to represent the building's factory and textile themes. Each painting features a main character, as well as a recurring character, the "Mad Scientist."

Anderson describes the design aesthetic they were looking for with the art was "postVictorian, steampunk-influenced industrial with a little bit of Mad Max." EASTER EGGS The main character, "The Benevolent Overseer," bears a striking resemblance to Rush frontman Geddy Lee. The clock is set to 9:12, which in military time is 21:12. All things revolve around 2112.

The marking of the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars The Flux Capacitor from "Back to the Future" • A nod to the famous Lewis Wickes Hine photo of a man working on a steam pump.

The first of Anderson's many pride-andjoys is the company's first-floor conference room.

The room's table, which, like most of the custom furniture and accessories throughout the office, is a creation of Fargo-based P2 Industries, is a striking centerpiece and contains a few unique features of its own.

To replicate the industrial era, during which, of course, there would have been no buttons or remotes, the table's projector can only be raised by turning a wheel that sits below the table's surface.

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OCTOBER 2016

The room also features the second of the three original Nicholas Jackson paintings, this one continuing the train depot theme and being called, naturally, "The Depot."

This one's secrets go beyond the painting itself, though, as its frame doubles as a vault.

EASTER EGGS The Conductor, the main character of "The Depot," charges $21.12. All things revolve around 2112.

The playbill features "Tom Sawyer," the name of a Rush song and the inspiration for Anderson's daughter's name, Sawyer.

Every location featured on the board is a location from either the Star Wars universe or a Rush song.

The clock from the MusĂŠe d'Orsay, a museum in Paris 57

The lights that overhang the conference table are from the Vorkuta mine in Russia, which is the site of a mine disaster that took the lives of 36 people earlier this year.

When asked how he got a hold of them, Anderson simply responds, "We know a guy who knows a guy."

Weiss' office

In what's become a recurring theme we've seen with business partners, Anderson and BlackRidge CFO Craig Weiss are what you can safely call polar opposites.

These are the pair's offices, about which Anderson has this to say: "He's a bit more organized than I am."

Anderson: "As you can see, I'm saving time."

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Anderson's office

Among the space's countless noteworthy custom decorations are these sconces, which serve as desk lamps in most of the offices.

"Anybody can go buy stuff off the rack," Anderson says, adding that each of the sconces contains what's called an Edison bulb, giving it a dimmer, more vintage vibe.

"But we wanted something different. Plus, they're just cool."

Anderson says they wanted the employee break room to be much more than that and were going for what he calls a "bistro vibe."

Retro manufacturer Big Chill supplied the candy apple red appliances, providing yet another unique touch to an office that wasn't in need of any.

The amount of detail that went into every part of the space is astonishing, all the way down to the laser-cut exit signs that adorn a number of doors in the building.

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Anderson: "These (open work areas) are custom for a couple reasons. Part of it is thinking about the employees. You want a place people can be proud to work and come and bring their family and kids. We asked people, 'How do you work? What do you need?'

Because, before, we were in a really closed space and people were tripping over each other.

"They wanted a spacious workspace, double monitors and a lot of storage. They didn't want cubes. They didn't want walls they couldn't see over. It was about creating a very userfriendly environment for them and making it a place they want to spend more time than they spend doing anything except sleeping."

As readers of Office Vibes will know, bathrooms are an unexpected but great source of pride for a number of companies in town, and BlackRidge is no exception.

Their unique twists on the loo include Prohibition-era, pull-chain toilets and authentic newspaper stands, which they blasted, roughed up, sanded, steel-wooled and ran over five times with a van to give them more of a wornin look.

A number of the BlackRidge offices feature yellowish brick walls, the inspiration for which came from a trip Anderson took last year to France with his family.

While eating breakfast at a centuries-old Parisian café with his wife and daughter, Anderson took a photo and, after looking at it, was struck by the walls in the background.

He knew he had to do something similar in BlackRidge's new office and, after some good old-fashioned legwork, was able to figure out a way to recreate them.

Cage-covered windows on the office windows "so they can lock in the animals," Anderson jokes.

The real reason for them?

"Because nobody else would do something like that," he says.

If you're a Bison fan—and Fargo INC! has learned there are a few of them around these parts—you'll love the flooring on the second level.

It's straight from the old Bison Sports Arena and the court on which BlackRidgeINSURANCE President Annette Ambuehl used to play her college ball for legendary Bison women's basketball coach Amy Ruley.

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If you're standing in the lobby and you look up, it's hard to miss the twoton chandelier affectionately known as "The Founder's Light." Depending on which direction you're facing, could read as a "W" or an "M," the former for Craig (W)eiss and the latter for (M)ark Anderson.

It had to be hauled in in four pieces— each weighing 1,000 lbs.—and hangs from a ceiling that Anderson explains was designed to intentionally look like it was falling in. If you look closely, you can spot some of the missing pieces.

Anderson says that the idea behind the second floor of the building, which houses the company's insurance department, was to create "their own little gymnasium."

And what gymnasium would be properly equipped without a locker room complete with, of course, Bison-colored lockers.

EASTER EGGS There are six lockers and each one's number has a particular significance (from left to right): 7: jersey number of Yankee great Mickey Mantle 9: jersey number of Red Sox legend Ted Williams and Fargo Native Roger Maris 32: jersey number of former Bison women's basketball player & BlackRidgeINSURANCE President Annette Ambuehl 42: jersey number of Brooklyn Dodger Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson 1138: a nod to THX 1138, the first film of Star Wars creator George Lucas 2112: All things revolve around 2112.

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In the second-floor conference room, you'll find a piece that looks like it belongs more in a sports museum than an office building.

Sitting atop 16 real wooden baseball bats—each with their own significance— is a replica of the storied Fenway Park scoreboard. The painted-on box score is from a Sept. 20, 1919, matchup between the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox. It was the last day Babe Ruth wore a Red Sox uniform before being sold to the New York Yankees and giving rise to the storied "Curse of the Bambino."

It's in this room that you'll also find the third of the original Nicholas Jackson oil works, this one known as "The Ball Yard."

See how many of the Star Wars, baseball and Rush references you can spot.

EASTER EGGS Each of the 16 legs to the table is a replica of a famed bat. These are just a few: Rosebud - bat from "Field of Dreams" Warclaw - the name of Babe Ruth's bat Black Betsy - the bat "Shoeless" Joe Jackson used Splendid Splinter - Ted Williams's bat Wonderboy - bat used by Robert Redford in "The Natural" The tabletop is an exact copy of the Fenway scoreboard, all the way down to the morse code and missing pieces.

A landing pod from Star Wars "Hey, that umpire looks a lot like Rush drummer Neil Peart."

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(TO TRY)

o IN C ! te a m rg Fa e th m o fr s ck a h fe S o m e b u si n e ss li

we've found es to the bottom line. We think com it en wh s ing sav d an y cienc t-effectively.

We at Fargo INC! believe in effi ) run smoother and more cos life d (an ess sin bu r you ke ma to some great business life hacks

canva.com While we believe in beautiful designs, we know that making presentations look professional and attractive can be expensive.

That's where Canva comes in. This free website has dozens of dragand-drop templated designs. You are only charged for any stock photos you use in your design.

Bonus Tip If you're more tech-savvy with PhotoShop or InDesign, graphicriver.com has thousands of fonts, logos and designs to download for a minimal price.

You can then open them in Photoshop in InDesign and tweak them to your heart's content.

sortd.com Our email inbox is one of the most stressful parts of our workday. It seems like it's never empty, and the really important emails get buried in the stream of worthless emails. That's where sortd comes in. This plugin for Gmail lets you effortlessly drag your emails into an organized to-do list. You can then check off when that email is completely take care of.

Bonus Tip Looking for another easy to use to-do list? Check out wunderlist.com.

You can create a free personal account and it will hopefully organize your busy life.

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By And rew Jas on

basecamp.com With a staff of more than 20 at Spotlight Media­—the parent company of Fargo INC!­—it can be hard to keep everything organized and running smoothly. We use Basecamp to keep our editorial process going strong. Basecamp is broken into different projects. Under each project, you can upload files, track schedules on the calendar, record things in text documents and more. More than 100,000 companies have signed up for Basecamp so we're obviously not the only ones who think it works.

Bonus Tip Slack.com is another very popular messaging app for teams that has more than three million daily active users.

typeform.com Whether you're sending out a mass survey to be filled out by thousands of people or you're just surveying a few of your valued customers, typeform.com allows you make easy to use surveys. The free version is very robust and allows you to create multiple-choice, yes/no, long text and more types of questions. It will then organize it in an easy-to-analyze way. Plus, it all looks beautiful. (We also recommend playing their Form Invaders game, which is a spinoff of Space Invaders that anyone who has spent time in corporate America is sure to enjoy.)

gofargojobs.com Alright, we might be a little biased toward this local Fargo jobs site from local digital marketing company Adshark Marketing because we partner with them, but we love that this is a job-search site built by Fargoans for Fargoans. You can post a job opening on the website (and in the back of Fargo INC! and Fargo Monthly), and internship postings are free.

bamboohr.com With a growing business, it's easy for the administrative side of things to get left behind. Bamboohr.com alleviates that problem by creating a centralized employee database for your company that will track things like PTO, length of employment, employee status and much more. It also allows you to make easy to use job openings for your website.

Trust us. It'll make life easier for you.

Interested in learning more about the way things are done at Spotlight Media?

Go to spotlightmediafargo.com/the-spotlight-way 70

OCTOBER 2016

By Nate Mickelberg Photos by Paul Flessland and courtesy of RDO Equipment Co.

Business Event Spotlight

Caters TatersFor Charity

W

hile the Fargo INC! business events calendar is a great overview of each month’s must-attend events

in the area, we’re occasionally going to take a deeper dive.

This month, we’re featuring the 17th annual RDO Equipment Co.’s Caters Taters for Charity potato luncheon taking place in November. We sat down with team members from both RDO and the YWCA—this year’s beneficiary of Caters Taters proceeds—to talk about why for-profit/nonprofit relationships are so beneficial to both sides.

17

years

The event has been running

Lindsay Paulson Public Relations Specialist RDO Equipment Co.

Jessi Zenker Communications Specialist RDO Equipment Co.

Erin Prochnow Executive Director YWCA Cass Clay

420 31,020

Miles the potatoes travel from a farm in O’Neill, Neb., to guests’ bellies in Fargo

Potatoes served in 16 years

73

Alright, so first question’s first: Why giant potatoes?

RDO: Our founder, Ron Offutt, is one of the

largest potato growers in the country, and 17 years ago, when RDO employees were challenged to come up with an event to give back to the community, they thought, ‘We grow potatoes. Why not do a potato luncheon?’

A lot of our history at RDO revolves around equipment and potatoes, and so it was a great way to provide potatoes to the community that would translate to something great for charities.

4 74

OCTOBER 2016

Hours the potatoes bake the morning of the event

2,700

Guests served at Caters Taters last year

Unlike some charity events, the beneficiary of Caters Taters changes each year. Why did you as a company decide to do that?

RDO: I think that one of the really unique

things for us as employees is that working with a different charity every year brings an awareness about the work that these different organizations are doing in Fargo-Moorhead and beyond. We work so closely with the charity and really get a feel for what they’re doing, and that helps give us more passion to do everything we can to make sure we pull off a great event for them.

39

°

Average temperature the last 5 years

YWCA: It inspires their employees and team

members to give back to charities that maybe they wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise, and the employees get to learn more about what we do and the needs that we have as an organization.

RDO: Over the last few years, one thing

that I’ve found to be really valuable is that we have multiple touch points with the charity throughout the year. For example, we’re going to have Erin come in and speak to our entire building so that we can really be the front lines helping drive this event and the mission of the YWCA. It’s kind of to help inspire and get the team ramped up with the event.

We partner with them for one year, but my hope is that it extends beyond that. It’s just a one-day event, but we hope that the impact for not only the charity but also our employees goes beyond that.

How is a charity chosen to become that year’s Caters Taters beneficiary?

RDO: Every three years, we ask charities to

apply and be a part of Caters Taters. It’s not a difficult application, but we want to know things about the work they’re doing, what the need is, where they’re getting their support from. Then, we make a decision every three years about who we’ll support for the next three years.

Besides the obvious financial benefit, why did the YWCA apply?

YWCA: We wrote to support our emergency shelter operations down on South University Drive. Just last year, we served more women and children than ever before in our history at nearly 1,500. So it couldn’t come at a better time.

220

Volunteers who help pull off the event each year

Last week, I was literally crawling around on the floor looking for paper products to serve chili out of. So to receive the support of this amazing stakeholder company—with all of their volunteer support—we have a small administrative staff so to have the support of an organization like RDO. The volume of volunteers and passion that they bring really does make a tremendous difference in helping us do the work that’s so important: caring for children in our childcare center or talking with women about their housing plans and educational goals.

RDO: We know that, as nonprofits, often

times their teams are small and they wear many, many hats. And so one of our goals with the event is that we don’t want them on the floor looking for plates. We want to do that for them. Their level of involvement is really to just be recipients and to really soak it in and have fun and not have to do all the nitty-gritty details they do every day.

what

Regional business staple RDO Equipment Co. will be hosting a potato luncheon to benefit the YWCA Cass Clay’s emergency shelter program. For a nominal donation, guests can enjoy a “pound-tato,” a one-pound baked potato with their choice of a variety of tasty toppings, a beverage and a dessert.

who

RDO Equipment Co. & YWCA Cass Clay

when

November 10, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

These kinds of events are obviously a boon to the charitable organization, but the reality is that there is a price to putting them on, no?

RDO: We try to do as much as we can with as little as we can, and so what we do and have gotten really good at is finding great partners to help provide both products and services. This event truly would not be possible without some really great community businesses that have supported us over the years.

We’re a very large organization and so we’re able to reach out to a lot of our larger partners.

And the support they give always blows me away. A company like John Deere, they have a local presence but are also a very large organization. The fact that they continue to support us with our needs for the event, I think it speaks to the partnership that RDO has with so many companies across the world.

one

person in a giant potato suit each year

where Baymont Inn & Suites 3333 13th Ave. S, Fargo

why

This year’s proceeds will benefit YWCA Cass Clay, the state’s largest shelter serving both women and children. The 110-year-old Fargo nonprofit also provides food, clothing, childcare, education and employment services, health counseling and transportation assistance. The YWCA is the ninth local charity to benefit from Caters Taters.

1,500

Miles the cheese travels from a dairy in Tillamook, Ore., to the event in Fargo

75

What do you all see as the larger importance of these kinds of ongoing relationships between charitable organizations and private businesses?

RDO: It’s a really hands-on way for our

employees to get involved and give back, and that’s a pillar (at RDO). As employees, we’re constantly encouraged and inspired and given opportunities to get involved. Each RDO employee has eight hours to volunteer in their communities.

YWCA: There’s no question that our events—

because of our limited staff—would not happen without volunteer committees. So it takes all of those folks from different businesses and those businesses being willing to give up some of that employee’s time. Whether they’re the accountant who serves on our finance committee or someone who helps plan events or someone who gets silent auction items, it takes all sorts of talents.

If there is someone out there wanting to get involved, our message would be that this is a great way to get your feet wet and find something you’re passionate about. Reach out and find a way to volunteer and get involved.

Because that’s part of the message of the event, too, is giving back. There are a lot of ways in our communities that folks are able to do that, whether it’s this event or some other organization.

previous beneficiaries

MORE INFO

To learn more about Caters Taters, visit rdocaterstaters.com If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor and want to see the various sponsorship opportunities, visit rdocaterstaters.com/ support.cfm

76

28 OCTOBER 2016

Minutes it takes to foil-wrap the thousands of potatoes baked for the event

438,000+ Total dollars raised for charity since the event’s inception.

10

Local charities that have benefited from the event throughout the years

IT'S ELECTION SEASON!

By Craig Whitney

The measure I urge you to vote “yes” on

I

t’s that time of year. With November’s elections looming, there is no doubt we are in the midst of campaign season, and we’re gearing up for a historic event. Between campaign ads, TV commercials, and advertisements in your mailbox, it’s hard to miss the importance of what will be happening on November 8. Between the presidential

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OCTOBER 2016

election, congressional races and legislative candidates and all the way down to local measures, your ballot is going to be full this election.

I encourage all potential voters to get out and voice their opinion through the act of casting a ballot. Do some research on the issues and reach out to the candidates

you could be voting for and get your questions answered. Find out where they stand on issues important to you to make an educated decision.

When it comes to legislative races in Cass and Clay Counties, I invite you to attend our legislative Candidate Cracker Barrel on Tuesday, October 18 at 3:30 p.m. at the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead. Candidates from Cass County Districts 16, 22, 44, and 46 have been invited, along with Clay County District 4 candidates. A cracker barrel-style event allows for individuals and candidates to have an informal discussion and interaction on topics rather than a formal debate.

Perhaps the most important

Photo by J. Alan Paul Photography

question on our local ballots will be the extension of the two sales taxes in Fargo and Cass County that voters overwhelmingly passed in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

It’s important to note that these are, in fact, extensions of those votes and not additional tax increases. The measure would only extend the current tax until the Diversion is completed and fully paid for.

The Chamber is a firm supporter of the FargoMoorhead Diversion Project, and we urge you to vote “yes” on this extremely important issue. We believe that extending the half-cent sales tax is the fairest way to properly fund a project that is so necessary for our region.

Craig Whitney is the president and CEO of the Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber of Commerce.

This is no longer about the Diversion but rather the best and fairest way to fund it.

Because we can’t outright buy the protection of our citizens, approving this tax and allowing the project to continue protects the best interests of our region and certainly is in the best interest of moving commerce forward in the region.

Let’s get this done for our community, who our children and grandchildren, who in the decades to come, will continue to make FargoMoorhead-West Fargo the best community in which to raise tomorrow’s leaders.

The Red River Market is a farmers' market in Downtown Fargo with a mission to create a space for all community members to experience the joys of locally produced food and local vendors. redriver.market 409 Broadway N, Fargo

TO BASICS ON TAX INCENTIVES 2 BACK Tuesday, October 4, 7:30 - 9 a.m.

Tony Grindberg

Dwight Cook

PLANNING COMMISSION 3 FARGO Tuesday, October 4, 4 - 8 p.m.

You can watch the meeting live on TV Fargo (channel 12). Meetings are rebroadcast each Sunday at 8 a.m., Tuesday at 4 p.m. and Wednesday at 8 a.m. cityofargo.com/calendar Fargo City Hall 200 3rd St. N., Fargo

5 IMPACTING MANUFACTURING CONFERENCE

Wednesday & Thursday, October 12 & 13 Jeffrey Liker, author of "The Toyota Way," and Carroll Thomas, director of National Institute of Standards and Technology Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NIST MEP), will be the featured speakers. Many other sessions covering a variety of topics will be presented over the dayand-a-half-long conference. impactdakota.com/conference Holiday Inn Fargo 3803 13th Ave. S, Fargo

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OCTOBER 2016

Hear from North Dakota State Senator Dwight Cook, chairman of the Senate Tax Committee since 2009, along with Fargo City Commissioner and former state senator Tony Grindberg. With their more than 30 years of combined legislative and business-development experience, you are sure to gain a strong understanding of why tax incentives were created, what the incentives have done for communities that have utilized them and what the future of these programs looks like. Registration includes breakfast and is $30 in advance and $35 at the door for Chamber members and $40 in advance and $45 at the door for non-members. fmwfchamber.com Holiday Inn Fargo 3803 13th Ave. S, Fargo

4 TRAFFIC TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING

Wednesday, October 5, 4 - 5:30 p.m.

You can watch this meeting live on TV Fargo (channel 99). Meetings are rebroadcast the first Tuesday of the month at 3 p.m., the second Tuesday at 8 p.m. and the third Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. cityofargo.com/calendar Fargo City Hall 200 3rd St. N., Fargo

Photos courtesy of Friesen Photography, FMWF Chamber of Commerce and Fargo Monthly

BUSINESS EVENTS

CALENDAR

OCTOBER 2016

RIVER MARKET 1 RED Saturdays, July 9 - October 29, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

OVERTIME RULE CHANGE 6 FLSA Wednesday, October 12, 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Join two "sisters-in-law" who happen to be real-life sisters to discuss the impact of the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) Overtime Rule change on your organization and to help you determine what to do about it. Martha Velasco Suarez is a labor and employment attorney who has extensive experience with the FLSA both as a litigator and in guiding companies through FLSA audits and Department of Labor disputes. Michelle Kommer, Western State Bank, has served as in-house counsel and HR executive with several organizations, leading through these issues from the "inside." From their two unique perspectives, you will be equipped with knowledge, information and tools to manage this unprecedented change.

Registration includes lunch and is $27 per person in advance and $32 at the door for Chamber members and $40 in advance and $45 at the door for non-members. fmwfchamber.com Ramada Plaza & Suites and Conference Center 1635 42nd St. S, Fargo

WAY DAY OF CARING 7 UNITED Thursday, October 13, 2 - 5 p.m.

Join the United Way of Cass-Clay for the 25th Annual Day of Caring, which will mobilize thousands of volunteers from all over the Cass and Clay County communities to help area seniors and those in need with projects around their homes. The volunteer opportunities and activities vary greatly for the day. Some individuals request help with light cleaning projects while some have larger requests for lawn care, cleaning gutters, and pulling out flower beds and gardens. unitedwaycassclay.org

Michelle Kommer

Martha Velasco Suarez

BUSINESS SUMMIT 8 WOMEN'S Sunday, October 16, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Join for a full day of outstanding personal and professional development opportunities, as well as the opening night Wine, Women & Chocolate reception. The Women's Business Summit includes the always-popular Breakfast with Entrepreneurs Panel, keynote speaker Sylvia Theisen and your choice of unique breakout sessions. trainingnd.com Bismarck Event Center 315 S. 5th St., Bismarck, ND

GREAT SPIRITS 9 IN Tuesday, October 18, 7 - 9 p.m.

Dress the part of a gangster or a flapper or come as you are. Either way, plan for a fantastic evening of gourmet food, top-shelf liquor and incredible music. There will also be a blind bottle auction so that you can bring the party home with you! For event updates, follow Mind Shift on Facebook. All proceeds support the work of Mind Shift as they employ the unique and considerable talents of adults on the autism spectrum. mindshift.works/in-great-spirits Proof Artisan Distillers 414 4th Ave. N, Fargo

CONTROL BOARD MEETING 12 LIQUOR Wednesday, October 19, 1 - 2 p.m.

Meetings are broadcast live on TV Fargo (channel 99). They are rebroadcast on the fourth Tuesday of the month at 7:30 p.m. and the first Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. cityofargo.com/calendar Fargo City Hall 200 3rd St. N., Fargo

CANDIDATE CRACKER BARREL 10 LEGISLATIVE Tuesday, October 18, 3:30 - 5 p.m.

The Chamber’s Legislative Candidate Cracker Barrel initiates or inspires routine conversations between our policymakers and business leaders. The Chamber has designed the event to provide you an opportunity to meet candidates and share the issues you are most interested in. The format is informal, unintimidating and very fast-paced. The engaging format allows connections to be made without note cards or scripts so the relationship will last after the election occurs. The event is free, but registration is required. fmwfchamber.com Hjemkomst Center 202 1st Ave. N, Moorhead

AMERICAN JOB FAIR 13 NEW Thursday, October 20, 9 a.m. - 2 p.m.

SELF-DOUBT: LIVING TO THRIVE 11 SILENCING Tuesday, October 18, 3:30 - 5 p.m. (social: 5 - 6 p.m.)

Whatever comes after the words “I am” is up to you. Redefine and take ownership of your life by moving past self-doubt, fear and perceived limitations. At this session of Women Connect, Bethany Gartin, performance consultant at Dale Carnegie, will focus on the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy and offer tools to overcome barriers and inspiration to conquer self-doubt.

Bethany Gartin

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OCTOBER 2016

fmwfchamber.com Avalon Events Center 2525 9th Ave. S, Fargo

Together with the Afro-American Development Association and the Rural Minnesota Concentrated Employment Program (CEP), the Moorhead Business Association invites you to their second annual New American Job Fair. Join them in matching eager-to-work new Americans with potential employers. Please enter through the north doors near the elevators and look for signage.

Will feature: interviews with potential employers (preferential time slots for those who attend a prescreening workshop—more info available on the MBA's Facebook page). Translation and on-thejob training services available. facebook.com/moorheadbusinessassociation Moorhead Center Mall 510 Center Ave, Moorhead

DOWN THE ROAD FOUNDERS ONLY RETREAT November 9-11

emergingprairie.com/events Coteau des Prairies Lodge 9953 141st Ave. SE, Havana, ND

BUSINESS AFTER HOURS December 1

fmwfchamber.com Ramada Plaza & Suites and Conference Center 1635 42nd St. S, Fargo

1 MILLION THANKS 2017

Thursday, January 19, 2017, 6:30 - 9:30 p.m.

emergingprairie.com/events Location TBD

AFTER HOURS 14 BUSINESS Thursday, October 20, 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.

Widely recognized as the region's most effective networking opportunity, Business After Hours creates and promotes business opportunities for everyone involved. The social atmosphere allows individuals to network with industry leaders, trade-show vendors and representatives of other organizations. Sponsored by Heritage Homes. fmwfchamber.com Hilton Garden Inn Fargo 4351 17th Ave. S, Fargo

MONTHLY MEETUPS* ··Bitcoin Meetup ··Cass-Clay Subcontractor Sales & Marketing Meetup ··Girl Develop It ··Fargo 3D Printing Meetup ··Fargo Cashflow Game Night ··Fargo Entrepreneurship Meetup

15 FLYING HIGH: A LOOK AT FARGO’S AIR SERVICE

Tuesday, November 1, 7:30 - 9 a.m.

You see them flying overhead and bringing visitors and residents to and from Fargo all day long, but do you know all of what is happening at Hector International Airport? Shawn Dobberstein, executive director of Hector International Airport, will provide you with a full update on construction projects, terminal changes and what to expect in the coming year for local air service. Michael Lum, consultant with Sixel Consulting, will also share an overall view of the Fargo air-service market.

Through data about passenger trends, fares, load factors, and popular domestic and international flights, you’ll gain an understanding of what it takes to gain air service in our region. Registration includes breakfast and is $30 in advance and $35 at the door for Chamber members and $40 in advance and $45 at the door for non-members. fmwfchamber.com Courtyard by Marriott Fargo-Moorhead 1080 28th Ave. S, Moorhead

··Fargo Virtual Reality Meetup ··Fargo-Moorhead Content Strategy ··The Fargo-Moorhead Real Estate Investing Meetup ··Master Networks – Fargo Business Referral Group ··Mobile Meetup Fargo ··Moorhead Entrepreneurship Meetup ··Red River Valley Big Data – Midwest Big Data Hub Meetup *All meetups above (except Bitcoin Meetup) can be found at meetup. com/cities/us/58102. If interested in the Bitcoin Meetup, please contact alarson@myriadmobile.com

FM

CAREER Finder

Fargo INC!, Fargo Monthly and gofargojobs.com bring you a section dedicated to careers in Fargo-Moorhead. Here you'll find...

SEVEN BENEFITS OF MEDIATION JOB LISTINGS 85

The site is clean and easy to use, as well as being mobile friendly.

gofargojobs.com A new way to find the next great job or employee

F

Employers can post a job opening in less than a minute and can easily add their listing to be posted in Fargo Monthly and Fargo INC!

argo INC!, Fargo Monthly and gofargojobs.com are excited to team up to provide a new way for job seekers to find their dream careers and for employers to find that perfect employee. Here’s some great information about gofargojobs.com.

• Gofargojobs.com was started by Rick Berg and Sean Maki, the two men behind the popular Fargo digital marketing agency, Adshark Marketing.

• The website aims to offer employers and employees an easy-to-navigate and userfriendly website.

• Employers can place listings online, via Facebook recruiting ads and in Fargo INC! and Fargo Monthly magazine.

for free, making it a great resource for college students.

• A new design will be launched shortly, making the site even easier and cleaner to use.

• Ultimately, Berg has big visions for the site. “It would be cool to just see it grow and be a dedicated resource that people rely on for finding jobs in Fargo,” said Berg.

“If it takes off, we can expand to other cities or the state of North Dakota.”

• Employers can post internship positions

“There weren’t a lot of job sites that were focused on just Fargo. All of the other options seemed to be expensive or didn’t produce results. We wanted to create a jobs site that was dedicated to the Fargo-Moorhead area, is simple and easy to use, easy for people to apply on, as well as affordable for employers.”

RICK BERG 86

OCTOBER 2016

If you are a job seeker, make sure you follow them on Twitter and Facebook for the latest job openings.

John Trombley’s "Seven Benefits of Mediation in the Workplace"

V

illage Business Institute Consulting & Training Manager John Trombley jokes about one of the great ironies of his job as a workplace conflict mediator, “If it weren’t for conflict, I wouldn’t have a job.”

John Trombley

BY Nate Mickelberg & John Trombley PHOTO BY Paul Flessland

Consulting & Training Manager Village Business Institute

the tyranny of

EITHER OR 88

OCTOBER 2016

Trombley is what’s known as a Qualified Neutral, which is a fancy way of saying he’s a trained and certified mediator, and with his background in not just workplace but also civil and family mediation, he’s seen a bit of everything in the world of compromise and resolution.

His e-book, “Seven Benefits of Mediation in the Workplace,” is not just a tool he uses in his own work, it’s a great reference for managers, HR professionals, and employees looking to gain some insight into the mediation process, should they ever find themselves involved in it someday.

1) Mediation avoids conflicts of interest by using an outside Qualified Neutral.

conversation with these two people in

One of the challenges for people in the

world the way they do. So it’s about

HR arena is that employees, advisors

trying to help both parties look beyond

and companies look to HR like they’re

their own personal slice of reality.

a BAND-AID. And sometimes HR

And I’ve become very aware of that

people aren’t even trained in mediation.

and I recognize, ‘Hey, I may be losing

They’ll do the best that they can do, but

objectivity, too.’ So it can be a struggle.

sometimes they know too much about

the room, you can sometimes see the unreasonableness of a situation or how that individual came to perceive the

3

Mediation

Misconception

#1

Mediation is punitive.

3) Mediation is much less expensive than litigation.

Sometimes, employees will come

The mediation process I use is a full-day

about the process and having a

I don’t want to know anything. I don’t

process typically. Rarely is it less than six

want to be influenced in one direction

hours of time, and sometimes it’s been

conversation with somebody they

or another. If someone reaches out to

longer. I try to get things done in one

me ahead of time, talk to me about the

day, and once we get things moving,

nature of the conflict, but don’t give me

we’re working toward a resolution.

the parties involved. And that’s especially true for supervisors, who can lose that objectivity.

your perspective about the individual.

Most of the time when you get attorneys

into mediation and you can already tell they’re tense. Not just nervous

don’t want to be in the same room with, but they feel like sometimes they’re being made or forced to go to mediation.

And I can’t speak to whatever

When I walk into a situation, my main

involved, it becomes an adversarial

goal is to maintain neutrality. Sometimes

relationship. It just is. And attorneys are

that is challenging. Certain personalities

going to charge $200, $250, $300 an

are more difficult than others, but my

hour, and they’re going to say, ‘You have

goal is to keep the main thing the main

to put this much down for starters.’

spoken to the employee before

Attorneys have a place and a function,

that they need to hear from their

thing, and to be able to maintain that objectivity is key to that.

2) Mediation ensures objectivity is maintained in the process.

conversations supervisors or HR managers have with individuals, but oftentimes, what needs to be they ever show up to mediation is

but if you can resolve the conflict without

supervisor or HR—whoever is

getting an attorney involved...To be quite

giving them the message—that

honest, my goal is to help folks not only resolve the conflict but to preserve the relationship. And that’s true whether it’s

The ‘he said, she said’ and finger-

coworkers or a supervisor-employee

pointing happens during mediation. A

or a divorcing husband-wife situation.

good mediator can help folks get past

I want to help these folks preserve the

that to focus on the behavior that’s

relationship. It’s not just a matter of:

causing the problems, as opposed to

who’s going to win? who’s going to lose?

engaging in character assassinations.

who’s right? who’s wrong?

I’ve never actively sought to find out a

To the extent possible, I’m trying to make

lot of information about anybody ahead

this a win-win. But sometimes it’s the

of time, but you do find—because

tyranny of either-or versus the freedom

we are human—that in the course of

of both-and.

the reason they’re being asked to go to mediation is not a means of spanking them but rather that it’s being provided as a tool to help them be successful in the work that they do. Otherwise, why would the company spend the time and resources?

89

3

Mediation

Misconception

#2

Mediators are judge & jury.

Sometimes employees think I’m going to make them do something. Like they’re going to be forced to do something they don’t want to do. And, of course, they quickly come to realize that I’m not there to sit as a judge.

Rather, guess what, guys? You’re the ones who are going to do the work. This is all up to you.

And I’m okay with whatever you decide. I’m not there to judge that.

My role is to facilitate a conversation. At the end of the day, I can walk away saying, ‘I don’t have a dog in the fight.’

And I am often times able to walk away, regardless of the outcome, feeling like, ‘Okay, I did my job.’ When folks walk away and they’ve been successful, they’re oftentimes pretty exhausted.

They have invested themselves emotionally and psychologically and if they can walk away with a list of items of agreement, they’re going to feel satisfied.

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OCTOBER 2016

4) Mediation offers a significantly higher level of compliance since the parties involved create the list of agreements.

The reason for this is that it’s the individuals who have been in the conflict who are developing the list. And they’re saying, ‘This is what we agreed to.’ I don’t do arbitration. An arbitrator is like a judge, ‘You will do this and you won’t do that.’

And that would be the net effect of somebody else saying, ‘This is what you’re going to do.’ Compliance is much more effective when you come up with the idea and you say, ‘This is what I’m willing to do and we’re going to hold each other mutually accountable.’

They’re the ones who are in control.

5) Mediation provides a process through which participants are able to find common understanding and reduced conflict.

We’re not talking rocket science here, but until folks get to the point where they actually own their own emotions and own their own view of the world and are willing to see from the other person’s perspective—whether they agree or disagree about the conclusions is not the point. The issue is: can you at least see how that person came to that point of understanding? And once we have that, it’s easy to identify: what can you do to keep from going there again? And that’s the list that they will develop.

It’s invariably communication, communication, communication. When you think about any relationship— whether it’s personal or professional— the ability to communicate effectively

and the ability to resolve conflicts effectively are the two things we always look for in a mate, in a good friend or in a supervisor. And, invariably, when it comes to communication issues, misunderstandings are a result of false assumptions.

Once a person has decided that something is intentional, it’s virtually impossible to get them to maybe consider that there’s another truth.

6) Mediation allows for the restoration and well being of workplace relationships – there are clear emotional and physiological benefits to be gained.

Conflict, stress, all those kinds of things not only take an emotional toll, they also take a physical toll. And research has shown that something like 50 percent of folks who have experienced conflict in the workplace have actually felt the physical implications and gone home sick as a result.

That takes an incredible toll, not only on the individuals themselves, but on the work and teammates. It impacts morale, good order, functioning and so forth. The impact of conflict in the workplace can’t be overstated.

In our world, we see how very closely related physical and mental health are.

7) Successful mediation allows people to focus on their work while not feeling like they have to be constantly looking over their shoulder.

At the end of the day, when you’re not worried about the conflict that you’re having with a coworker, you’re free to concentrate on what you’re there to do,

3 which is the work at hand. It’s a natural consequence and it allows the entire team to get its job done.

And here’s the other part of this. It’s implied but needs to be stated. We oftentimes think we can contain conflict in the workplace and that it doesn’t impact anybody else, but at the end of the day, the person who pays for it without ever realizing it is the customer. That’s the bottom line. They don’t even know that they’re paying for conflict, but they pay for it as a result of poor quality of service, poor product, delayed service, any number of things.

If you’ve ever gone into a store or to a business where you’re dealing with somebody who’s grumpy behind the counter, then guess what? You, as a customer, are paying for that. Your experience is suffering and you’re also going to show that back to them.

Mediation

Misconception

#3

Mediation participants are aware of their own assumptions.

Check your own assumptions. If someone ever does something that hurts you or offends you, rather than talking to everyone else about it, have the internal fortitude to go to that person and say, ‘Hey, maybe it’s just me, but when you said this and you did that, this is how it made me feel.’ Or another way to approach it is, ‘When you said that, this is what I heard. Is that what you meant?’ In other words, kind of clear the air before it becomes an issue.

People will often attribute intent

MORE INFO

To learn more about the benefits of workplace mediation, contact: Village Business Institute thevbi.com/workplace-mediation 1201 25th St S, Fargo 701-451-4900 Typical mediation disputes include: • Supervisor-employee disputes • Work team conflicts • Employee-employee disputes • Perception of discrimination • ADA accommodations To download a free copy of Trombley's e-book, "Seven Benefits of Mediation in the Workplace," visit thevbi.com/workplace-mediation

based on how it makes them feel.

And we all do it. If you do something to make me feel good, I assume good things about you. If somebody does or says something to make us feel bad, a lot of it depends upon our own particular filter system.

And we all have them. We all have a filter that’s based on our past life experiences, our families, our values, history, whatever those things might be. Our past hurts.

Construction

Healthcare

Construction Laborer

Registered Nurse

Local company is seeking laborers experienced in construction, concrete or similar areas. Heavy lifting and the ability to read a tape measure required. Will train the right candidate.

Prairie St. John’s, a 110-bed psychiatric care facility located in Fargo, has been providing services for children, adolescents, adults, and seniors to address mental health issues, chemical dependency or addiction and cooccurring disorders since 1997.

West Fargo

$15 - $20 / hour Apply:

Visit expresspros.com/fargond

Fargo

Apply:

Email PSJHR@uhsinc.com

Human Resources

Transportation

Staffing Consultant

Appliance Delivery

Fargo

Moorhead

Work with clients and job seekers daily, conduct interviews and more. No two days are ever the same in this fastpaced, fun-loving office. If you are a good communicator, experienced in Microsoft Office programs and care about helping people, this job is for YOU! $15+ / hour Apply:

Visit expresspros.com/fargond

A Local Appliance Co. is looking to add a delivery driver to their team. This position will require loading and delivering appliances to homes in the F-M Area. Applicant must have valid driver’s license and ability to do some heavy lifting. $15-$20 / hour Apply:

Visit expresspros.com/fargond

Professional

Technology

Digital Strategy Intern (Paid) VP - Special Assets Manager

Senior Technical Consultant

Fargo Spotlight Media

Fargo

Howposition do I apply?

This is responsible for overseeing the Commercial Special Assets of a bank, including managing the collection department. Five years or more of collection management or supervisory experience and a four-year degree in accounting, finance or a related field is required.

This position will deliver professional technical consulting, support and troubleshooting to customers for Microsoft Dynamics GP, KEY2ACT Job Cost and Service Management, Management Reporter, FRx, SQL, Integration Manager, Scribe, CRM, Binary Stream software and Microsoft Office.

Apply: moreVisit infospherion.com/fargo at SPOTLIGHTMEDIAFARGO.COM

Apply:

Visit spherion.com/fargo

Sales Digital Strategy Intern (Paid) Promotional Sales

Spotlight Media Fargo How do I apply?

92

Outside Digital Strategy Sales Representative Intern (Paid)

Fargo Spotlight Media How do I apply?

We’re looking for a sales rep to help sell promotional products for our franchise company. Applicant must have experience in this field. This person will take sales orders and process the orders.

Spherion Staffing has a Business to Business sales position with strong customer service and account management experience available. Applicants must be able to prospect community businesses and leaders to perform active sales procedures and create a business relationship.

Apply: Visit at bit.ly/specprosales more info SPOTLIGHTMEDIAFARGO.COM

Apply: Visit at spherion.com/fargo more info SPOTLIGHTMEDIAFARGO.COM

OCTOBER 2016

gofargojobs.com

Customer Service

General

Digital Strategy Intern (Paid) Career Opportunities

Digital Strategy Intern (Paid) Leasing Specialist

Digi-Key is currently seeking detail-loving, passionate employees to join our Inbound Sales and Product Distribution Center (PDC) teams. If you enjoy providing superior customer service or working in a fast-paced environment, apply now to find your new career today!

How do I apply?

Goldmark strives to make a positive impact on the lives of others. An opportunity is available to serve those looking for or living in apartment homes we manage.

We’re accepting applications for caring and dedicated candidates for full and part-time positions with opportunities for advancement.

Apply: Visit at www.digikey.com/careers more info SPOTLIGHTMEDIAFARGO.COM

Apply: more info Visit atgoldmark.com/careers SPOTLIGHTMEDIAFARGO.COM

Digital Strategy Intern (Paid) Workflow Coordinator

Digital Strategy Intern (Paid) Maintenance Technician

How do I apply?

Duties include but are not limited to: mopping, How do I apply? vacuuming, carpet cleaning, lawn care, general plumbing and electrical, general house care and meeting with contractors. Must be able to lift up to 50 pounds and pass a background check. This position is Monday through Friday 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m.

more info atintegreon.com SPOTLIGHTMEDIAFARGO.COM Apply: Visit

more info at SPOTLIGHTMEDIAFARGO.COM Apply: Email bhalvorson@mcrsi.com

Document Processing Specialist

Digital Strategy Intern (Paid) Program Assistant

Fargo, ND Fargo

Spotlight Media Moorhead

This supports word processing and presentation Howposition do I apply? graphics for all projects received through Integreon. They will also be responsible for the completion of all work given to them by a Workflow Coordinator (WFC).

Full and part-time positions available. Assist clients with disabilities in a variety of areas based on need, including cooking, cleaning, supervision, transportation and redirection of behavior.

Apply:

more info atbhalvorson@mcrsi.com SPOTLIGHTMEDIAFARGO.COM Apply: Email

Spotlight Thief RiverMedia Falls, Minn.

Fargo Spotlight Media

This position manages word processing projects by communicating with clients and assigning projects to other Integreon Associates.

Visit integreon.com

Fargo Spotlight Media

Moorhead Spotlight Media

How do I apply?

Energy & Oil DigitalAdmin Strategy Intern (Paid) Intake Specialist

Digital Strategy (Paid) Propane ServicesIntern Technician

The duties in this position may range from meeting preparation, internal and external correspondence, report preparation, document and word processing assistance and many other administrative duties as requested.

How do I apply?

Petro USA is looking for qualified applicants to be a HowServe do I apply? member of our team. We offer competitive wages, medical benefits, paid vacation, holiday and sick days. Qualified individuals have 2+ years of propane service experience.

CETP certification is preferred.

Apply: Visitatintegreon.com more info SPOTLIGHTMEDIAFARGO.COM

Apply: Visitatbit.ly/PSUSA16 more info SPOTLIGHTMEDIAFARGO.COM

Fargo Spotlight Media

94

OCTOBER 2016

West FargoMedia Spotlight

gofargojobs.com