By All Means

Adam Turman is one of Minnesota’s most prolific working artists today, known for capturing state icons like Paul Bunyon and the Stone Arch Bridge in vibrant illustrations. He’s also unapologetically commercial, selling his drawings on giftware, apparel, prints, and murals seen around town from Surly Brewing to his latest, and largest, yet: a 220 foot by 40 foot scene on the side of a parking ramp for the new Corsa Apartments in St. Louis Park.

He’s managed to do what most artists only dream of: pursue the creative projects that fuel him, and turn it into a successful business that includes licensing deals, custom projects, brand work, and art prints.

“I’ve always really liked having a reason to make the art I make,” says Turman, who started his career as a graphic designer for creative agencies. “I’m just trying to make things people really enjoy.”

Turman offers a peek behind the canvas and into his company, from licensing deals to corporate collaborations, and how he’s embracing AI.

For broader perspective, we go Back to the Classroom with Shinwon Noh, assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas Schulze School of Entrepreneurship. "Often, we believe arts and commerce are conflicting concepts, that you're bound to sacrifice one to achieve success in the other. That's not true," Noh says. "Find a sweet spot between what you want to do and what your audience wants to see. Art is a passion-driven career. Self-awareness is a must."

The Surly Brewing story is the stuff of entrepreneurial legend in Minnesota, but in recent years, founder Omar Ansari has had to contend with an industry wide decline of beer sales, diversification of the adult beverage market, pandemic shutdowns, and changing employee expectations.

“Things have changed and we’re having to change with it,” Ansari says.

Over the summer, Ansari got back to his roots: visiting neighborhood bars that sell Surly, connecting with fans, and telling the story.

In this wide ranging conversation, we go back to how it all started, and then talk about how Ansari had had to come around to doing contract brewing and introducing new beverages like hop water and a THC seltzer to stay competitive. “If that’s where we’re at, that’s what will do.”

Then we go back to the classroom with the University of St. Thomas Schulze School of Entrepreneurship. Assistant professor Casey Frid has conducted research on the craft beer industry and talks about how the market saturation can chip away at a brand’s character. “Previously, craft brewing was about independence,” Frid says. “Now you do what have to to survive.”

Zoë Levin saw opportunity in the toilet paper aisle to create a high design brand committed to sustainability. Armed with a $10,000 Kickstarter fund and a whole lot of moxie, she believed she could compete against the likes of Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark.

Bim Bam Boo, made of fast-growing bamboo fiber and packaged in colorful paper wraps, launched in 2018 at a direct-to-consumer brand. Levin quickly learned that even the savviest online shoppers rarely order toilet paper online—it’s one of those staples people tend to run to the store to pick up. She was limping forward, trying to elevate an everyday product by promoting the benefits bamboo and cautioning consumers that 27,000 trees are flushed down the toilet every day in the U.S. And then the Covid-19 pandemic drove people into lockdown/stock up mode, setting off the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. “Suddenly I knew: I had the most wanted product in the entire world.”

With very little inventory on hand, but a manufacturing process in place utilizing a highly regenerative material, Levin was able to step up production and get on the shelves at Whole Foods. Today, Bim Bam Boo is sold in 1,800 stores nationwide including select Target and Fresh Thyme stores. Levin says she’s just getting started. She recently added bamboo wet wipes, paper towel and facial tissue to the collection and is in the midst of raising her first $1 million seed round.

“The future of the supply chain—the future of the paper industry—is at a crossroads,” Levin says. “I truly believe that we will be one of the major players solving the climate crisis through paper.”

Back to the Classroom

Innovating on basic products is becoming commonplace, driven by consumer demand, says Danielle Campeau, incoming associate dean of the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas. “Students tend to think about big, flashy tech ventures, but we always encourage them to think about innovation in unique, underestimated areas.” Consumers crave socially minded brands, giving Bim Bam Boo an opportunity to disrupt a category that is owned by large companies. “Sustainability is the new standard,” Campeau says.

From farmers market novelty to grocery store mainstay: Minnesota-made Maazah, a line of Afghan-style chutney sauces, is poised to break through through the global foods aisle to become a mainstream condiment, much like Sriracha.

Founder Yasameen Sajady takes us from her mom’s kitchen, where she got the idea to bottle up the flavors of her family dinners that weren’t readily available at Western stores, to inflection point: Maazah is now sold in more than 150 stores nationwide and expects to double that by the end of the year.

“The industry is ripe for this shakeup—a woman-run, global product on the shelf," Sajady says. "It represents so much that we do: the way customers are shopping, and eating.

Sajady talks about the benefits of accelerator programs, raising her first venture round, the challenge of relying on co-packers, spending on a publicist, and scaling up for a national opportunity with Kroger stores.

“Every three or four months, everything gets so much bigger,” Sajady says. “And it takes capital and knowledge.”

Following our conversation, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Schulze School of Entrepreneurship.

"We’ve reached a point where people in society have become impatient with inauthentic brands,” says entrepreneurship professor John McVea. “We have this hunger for authenticity. People have reached the point where they’re saying to big companies: we want access to real brands.”

And Minnesota, with its depth of large companies in the agriculture and food manufacturing space, is an ideal place to build startup food brands, McVea says. “We should be the Silicon Valley of the food business. There’s so much expertise here.”

Appearing on a TV remodeling show may be the quickest path to notoriety in the interior design space today, but Bria Hammel is more interested in building an enduring business. She’s leveraged social media to cultivate a following of more than 200,000, which helped to build St. Paul, Minn.-based Bria Hammel Interiors into a national design firm. In 2018, she parlayed her expertise into a retail business, Brooke & Lou, specializing in “life friendly furniture.” And that success has led to licensing deals with other brands.

“I am a risk taker, but I’m a cautious risk taker,” Hammel says. She talks about running two distinct but overlapping businesses and how EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System) helps in running an efficient team. She talks about the online design service that was born out of Covid, and learnings from her first brick and mortar retail pop-up. Plus, design advice including the trick to successfully styling a bookcase and why she’s glad to see the Midcentury modern trend fade in popularity.

After our conversation with Hammel, we go back to the classroom with marketing professor Mike Porter at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. He talks about the challenge of scaling a service business, and what Hammel is doing well. “She emulates best practices in saying, what do I do, and what can I hire someone else to do.”

Amin Aaser was an entrepreneur in search of a problem, and then he realized the problem that had been with him his whole life: feeling different. Embracing his faith as a Muslim while also living his best life as an American. Aaser, along with his brother, launched Noor Kids with the goal of “raising Muslims who build a better world.” Initially, that took the shape of a magazine. Then came books, and more recently, video programming, which is drawing a global audience and setting the stage for a new chapter of growth for the Minneapolis-based social enterprise startup.

To date, Noor Kids has published 140 titles and reached more than a quarter of million people with its content, which is available under a “freemium” model—some is free; subscriptions can be purchased for full access. The latest product is “Noor Kids Muslim Treehouse”—think of it as Mr. Rogers for a multicultural, international audience that interacts over Zoom. You can watch it now on YouTube, and don’t be surprised if you see it soon on a streaming service, or maybe even a network.

Aaser talks about turning his passion project into a full-time job, how he applied his corporate and business school experiences to his entrepreneurial mission, and how to know when it’s time to raise money.

Following our conversation with Aaser, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Schulze School of Entrepreneurship where professor AnnMarie Thomas teaches entrepreneurship. She talks about the value of following your heart in entrepreneurship. “In this day and age, we know that kids are really struggling in a lot of ways, trying to find meaning,” Thomas says. “With social and emotional learning, they are tapping into something families are really looking for.”

Years before chatbots burst into the mainstream, a trio of Minneapolis-based fishing enthusiasts launched a data-driven e-commerce shopping platform for anglers that gets smarter the more people use it. Omnia Fishing, founded in 2018 is disrupting the $5 billion dollar U.S. and Canadian tackle industry by offering a shop-by-lake e-commerce experience that connects customers to the gear they need based on where they’re fishing, what they’re fishing for, and even the time of year.

Co-founders Matt Johnson (CEO), Chris Morgal (COO), and Dan Wick (CTO) each bring a unique skill set and prior startup experience to Omnia. They walk us through how they’re setting up the company, which is not yet profitable, for big success, from raising $1 million right out of the gate to figuring out how to set up a warehouse and deliver merchandise to leaning on user-generated content. All told, Omnia has raised more than $6 million to date to build its tech-intensive, space-based shopping platform.

“There’s so much being bandied about with AI,” Wick says. “It’s great in a vacuum, but unless you apply that to a business case, it doesn’t really matter.”

Omnia fishing is poised to hit eight figures in sales this year. The company employs 25 and features more than 25,000 products and information on at least 20,000 lakes on its site. ”We truly believe we are building a better experience,” Johnson says.

Following our conversation with the founders, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business where Gino Giovanelli is a marketing professor and thinks the growing awareness of AI is making consumers more trusting of information provided by a site like Omnia Fishing.

“The smartest thing they did: they had a lane, stuck to it with three different personalities and skill sets,” Giovanelli says, For startups, that can be tricky. Set out with big goals in mind and said it’s going to be hard, but that’s the only way to make it.

"If I had listened to people around me, I wouldn't have proceeded after three months. This is a risky business and maybe it isn't going to work and I'm going to look back and say I spent $300,000 and four years of my life, but I do believe the end is in sight."

David Swan is the founder of PUR Golf—that stands for Producing Unmatched Results. PUR golf is a training aid designed to help golfers improve their swing. Just hitting the commercial market this year, the PUR Golf trainer was named "one of the three items golfers need in 2023" by the PGA . It sells online exclusively.

Swan started his career as a basketball coach, first college, then for a professional team in Norway. His career has been a winding road since he retired from coaching in 2002. Real estate, software sales, motivational speaker, founder of Bright Day Energy, a Minneapolis-based company that specializes in LED and solar lighting.

Only in the last few years did Swan add product inventor to that list, when his golf game started to tank. David is an entrepreneurial thinker, and in improving his own game, he came up with a product that would help others as well. When it didn’t work, he tried again, and again. On the 300th, he says PUR Golf finally ready for consumers. His friends think he’s nuts, but then, isn’t that the story with most successful founders?

Swan doesn't let the doubters get him down. He says this is just the way he’s wired.

Following our conversation with Swan, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Schulze School of Entrepreneurship. Professor Alec Johnson differentiates inventors from innovators. "Inventors have a solution and go out seeking a problem to solve. Innovators listen to the voice of the customer and adapt their solution to fit the market. That's what David did by going to golf pros to make his product better." Johnson will teach a class next year on making the transition from inventor to innovator.

Isaac Lien was a college student in California who wanted to stay in touch with his grandma in Iowa. When popular video conferencing programs proved too complicated for her, Isaac decided to develop his own simplified software tool. It worked. Issac’s father Scott Lien immediately recognized the potential. Scott was a career corporate technologist who had worked for Target, Best Buy, and Bank of America before taking the leap to become a startup co-founder with his son. Together, they launched GrandPad as a platform that makes it easier for seniors to connect with families, friends and caregivers. Grandpad has reached 1.6 million in 120 countries so far. The company, based in Hopkins, Minn., employs 165 and has raised $31 million to scale its technology—both hardware and software, with human-centered around-the-clock customer service to back it up.

The Liens talk about working with family, moving from mission to profitable company and why they believe helping people over 75—super seniors as they call them—with technology isn't a market soon to evaporate.

Following our conversation with the Liens, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business where Kjrk Reyerson teaches Health Innovation and says the GrandPad story is a testament to the importance of knowing your customer.

"There are tons of great ideas, but do you have the right opportunity, the right focus and mindset. This story is about passion. Knowing you have to solve this obstacle for grandma, realizing no one has done this. Tech is the enabler to create that connection."

Frustrated that pills weren’t making her heart patients feel better, Minneapolis-based cardiologist Dr. Elizabeth Klodas went looking for other answers. She started with a simple question for her patients: “What are you eating?” and was shocked to find more than a decade ago ago that she was often the first medical professional to ask her patients that question. “All of a sudden it dawned on me: we talk about food as medicine, what if we took that concept and interpreted it literally? A dose of food.”

She started experimenting with foods naturally high in fiber, antioxidants, plant sterols, omega-3 fatty acids and created a cereal that she shared with patients. They started feeling better. That led to the creation of Step One Foods, an e-commerce snack food brand based in Eden Prairie, Minn. that has seen 40-fold revenue growth since 2017. Of course, Dr. Klodas wanted scientific proof that her food products could improve heart health, so she sponsored a clinical trial at the Mayo Clinic, where she had trained. The study, published in the Journal of Nutrition, 2022, proved that Step One Foods could lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in patients who ate it consistently.

Today, Dr. Klodas continues to see patients while also running her fast-growing food brand. It’s definitely not the journey she expected when she went to medical school. “I did it because no one was solving the problem I was seeing,” she says. “There’s a huge gap in care that needs to be filled. I’m one small company. If you think of the breadth of health conditions that could benefit from targeted nutrition interventions—that field between drugs on the one end and food on the other is vast.”

Following our conversation, we go Back to the Classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business where marketing professor Mike Porter says many an accidental entrepreneur like Klodas is made by being open to discovery. Starting a food business was not her goal, rather a means to help patients.

“Purpose was the accident, but everything she did after that was purposeful. If, then. The purpose drives her.”