Victory Tour Across the USA—On a Mower?

Visiting entrepreneurial, locally owned manufacturing operations is one of my favorites when I’m touring small towns as part of my speaking tours. This week I visited one such firm, Excel Industries, in Hesston, KS. The company started 45 years ago to build tractor and combine cabs, a rarity at the time. They built those cabs for companies like John Deere until 2 years ago. John Deere accounted for 2/3 of their business, so losing that business to Deere’s in-house plants was a shock and required a major shift for the business.

Bob & Paul Mullet, majority owners of Excel, fortunately had another product that accounted for the other 1/3 of their business, zero turn mowers. They’ve expanded that business and grown it to replace what they lost to Deere. Refocusing from only commercial into residential and expanding the dealer base has allowed them to refocus the business, making it better. Bob Mullet told me, “One of our challenges is handling all of the growth. We’ve been up 40% per year for the last 3 years running.”

The zero turn mower was invented in 1963 in Hesston by John Regier who wasn’t an engineer but a “putterer” or mechanical genius who loved to work on equipment. Taking a design from Lyle Yost’s Hesston Manufacturing swather (that cluster thing again!), he adapted it to mowing his lawn. Excel named the new machine the “Hustler” after the Air Force’s workhorse B-58 Hustler fighter-bombers.

Excel developed the Hustler for commercial use only, selling the machine thru 80 dealers scattered around the country. When they lost the Deere cab business, they refocused the company solely onto the turf business, expanding into machines for the homeowner. From that base of only 80 dealers they’ve expanded to over 900 and gone into overseas markets. Only 5% of their sales are overseas today, but they expect it to grow to 25% within 5 years. It’s another example of American ingenuity developing markets around the world.

Their major residential mowing promotion this year is built around famous NASCAR racer Richard Petty and a fundraiser for Victory Junction Gang Camp, a children’s camp that he sponsors in North Carolina. Called the Mow for Victory Tour (www.mowforvictorytour.com), Josh Schmidt, 19 year old son of Excel’s sales manager, is driving a Super Z Hustler painted to look like Petty’s racecar from CA to NC. He left CA on February 26, is in western AL right now and should get to the camp on May 28th. They hope to raise $250,000 for the camp with this promotion.

When I asked Paul Mullet what the Mow For Victory Tour was costing the company he told me, “I don’t want to know what it is costing us. I just know that our marketing budget is way over budget.” I loved his follow on comment, “Next time we’re going to see how fast we can drive one of our Hustlers across the country.”

Tomorrow’s blog is on the challenges that US manufacturers like the Mullets face.

Can Even an A+ City Build a Mountain?

The stats looked great! High school grads 12% above national average, bachelor’s degrees 30% higher and families below poverty 1/3 of national average were all not bad for a town of 3,509. But what took my breath away were the amenities that don’t show up in statistics.

Hesston, KS is a relatively young town, incorporated in 1921 with 500 people and had only grown to about 600 by 1960. But, Lyle Yost’s starting of Hesston Manufacturing in 1956 catapulted the small town forward. Yost invented the swather and the Hesston swathers and balers became world famous. He sold the company in 1980 and after passing thru several owners is today owned by AGCO, which has consolidated plants in MO, OH and TX into Hesston. The High School mascot is a Swather, probably the only one in the country.

AGCO and other manufacturers in the town give the community a strong industrial base with over 1500 jobs. But, what really struck me were the amenities that the community has added over the years, especially for a town this size. I’ve been in a lot of towns in the past year and this one gets an A+.

They’ve got 5 new subdivisions opening up as there is a shortage of housing. 83% of the manufacturing workforce is from out of town. One area of town is filled with new retirement and senior housing. The Hesston Wellness Center, which includes an indoor pool, would be the envy of cities of 20,000. Ditto to the Dyck Arboretum! They also developed their own 2 year college which offers aviation, nursing and other 2 year courses.

In the mid 70s Hesston looked at either building a lake or a municipal golf course. They got some help from the federal government and built a beautiful 18 hole course that Golf Digest in 2004 ranked as one of the top 200 in the USA for value. It has been self sustaining for the town since it was built.

They are doing a 1.7 mile hiking trail (cost $750,000) that will link the new housing areas with the schools and other areas of town.

One of the most innovative new projects I saw was an intergenerational child care center that is being built adjacent to the Schowalter Senior Living Center. This non-profit Mennonite Foundation hopes to have the elderly read to the children and have other interactions that are beneficial for both. Neat idea!

And, it is a neat, tidy town. Shana Smith, head of the Chamber and John Carder, City Administrator, gave me a tour. Carder, who has been an administrator in other towns, told me, “Last year we had to only send out one weed notice for someone to mow their lawn compared to about 150 that I used to send out in a similarly sized town that I was at before.” Smith and her husband moved back here from Denver when their oldest daughter was ready to start school, because of the wonderful quality of life in Hesston.

And the mountain? Actually, it’s not exactly a mountain. This is Kansas after all! When the only sledding hill that the kids could find to ride down was at the interstate, the people of Hesston built their own hill. And, it’s a big hill! Right in the middle of one of their many parks. They call it Mount Hesston!

Notes From Race City USA

Mooresville, NC is one of my favorite agurbs®. It was a one horse town with 5,600 jobs in the textile mill industry in the early 1980s, way too many for a town of only 10,000. Residents decided that even though textiles were doing well at the time, they needed to diversify their job base. They started a new 250 acre industrial park on the outskirts of town and brought in a stable of new companies.

One of the early companies that located in Mooresville was NGK Ceramics USA, a Japanese manufacturer of catalytic converters. This month they completed a major expansion with a new 100-yard-long kiln that will increase production from the current 50,000 catalytic converters they produce per day for virtually every auto producer. The $60 million investment solidifies the 500 high paying manufacturing jobs at this plant, according to Melanie O’Connell Underwood, economic developer for the community.

Another initiative of Mooresville in the 1980s was branding their town as “Race City USA”, hoping to encourage race teams to locate in this high quality of life community. From only one team in 1989, 48 more teams have moved their headquarters, plus another 150 entrepreneurial racing suppliers to Mooresville. Mooresville is the epicenter of racing in NC, an industry that provides 24,000 jobs in the state and generates over $5 billion in economic impact to the state. The state is looking at building a new testing and research center in the state and I’m guessing that Mooresville will be on the top of the list of where that facility should be located. It’s another example of the impact of clustering on a community and region.

Cessna Test Flies Their New VLJ Also

I’m out in KS and OK this week, but spending most of my time driving and touring not writing. Today I drove 400 miles starting in Hesston, KS; and visited Sedan, KS; Bartlesville, OK; Perry, OK; and ending in Chickasha, OK. I’ll have several blogs on several of these great towns in the next week. I’m doing two talks tomorrow at the Rural Economic Development Summit in Chickasha, including my new “Hometown Entrepreneurs: Your New Paradigm Shift in Economic Development.”

I flew into Wichita on Tuesday where Cessna test flew their new entry-level business jet, the Citation Mustang, this week for the first time. Eclipse and Adams are both testing similar Very Light Jets (VLJ), but at much lower price levels than Cessna. Cessna plans to deliver the new Mustang in 2006.

DayJet intends to fly the Eclipse, test flown in 2004, and made in Albuquerque.

New On-Demand Airline

What if you could marry high speed computers, sophisticated databases and the new Very Light Jet (VLJ) aircraft? I wrote about the future impact of just this on where we live in my book and saw its possibilities when I visited Eclipse Aviation’s Albuquerque headquarters last year. This week another player entered the field, DayJet of Delray Beach, FL. This follows Pogo, another start-up being launched by former AA CEO Robert Crandall and People Express founder Donald Burr.

DayJet CEO Ed Iacobucci, founder of the software company Citrix Systems, calls his new service a combination of a private jet charter and an airline. Customers would log onto the company’s website, entering the cities that they want to fly between. They would enter the dates that they want to fly and parameters like, “arrive there no later than _____ time; depart by __________ time; etc.”

DayJet would confirm your flight, matching it up with others going in similar directions and time of day. There will be business people on tight schedules and grandparents that are more flexible. All would fly and fly at a price that is only slightly more than full fair coach tickets today.

It will revolutionize how we travel by air, opening up the 10,000 airports in this country to more travel, even as the 150 that currently handle 98% of our air travel diminish in importance. No longer will busy travelers have to live near O’Hare, DFW or Newark. Think of how this will change where people will live?

A Shooting Star Fades Away

Sparta, IL and my hometown, Effingham, have both been way stations for a corporate star that faded way too quickly. I reminisced with several people when I was in Sparta last Thursday giving my Boomtown talk. While it was a great run while it lasted and left many long term benefits for both communities, it was a painful loss for both towns.

World Color Press (WCP) printed comic books for decades in Sparta. When the company expanded into magazine printing in the 1960s they built their second plant in Effingham in 1969. At the time it was the largest printing room in the world. Magazine printing became their main focus and they moved their corporate headquarters here, but continued to print comic books in Sparta.

During the 70s and 80s they grew into other southern Illinois towns like Salem, Mt. Vernon, Flora and Altamont. They also added plants in TN, CA & OK. Times were good! Perhaps too good. Rather than risk a strike WCP generously acquiesced to union demands.

Times change but change is often difficult for many. Magazine printing got more competitive, companies consolidated, and suddenly WCP was a small part of a larger company. And the new company demanded efficiency and an adequate return on investment, something that huge, highly structured plants often have difficulty adapting to. In the end the new company closed all of the plants in IL, while the more flexible plants in the other states have remained operational.

Yes, several offshoots of WCP are still around and operating (that cluster thing again!). And, Sparta, Effingham and the other towns will pick up the pieces. It was great while it lasted, but painful when the company left town.

The moral: Ever town must be prepared for change. It will happen, you just don’t know when. You’ve got to continually be innovating as a community and constantly looking to how you can improve and innovate.

Tumbleweed, Oil and a Question?

I sometimes pinch myself to make sure that I’m not dreaming. Who would believe that people would pay me to travel around the country, touring wonderful communities, meeting dynamic town leaders and getting to share my passion for the agurbs®?

It was a beautiful spring day for the 2 hour drive from Lubbock, TX to Lovington, NM late last week. The roads were fine and fast (no speeding tickets!); farmers were in the fields; and country music was flowing from the radio. I even saw some tumbleweed! Oil rigs were pumping away and new wells were going in right and left. I saw 10 oil rigs drilling in a 10 mile stretch in TX and 6 in one small spot in NM. The oil boom is beneficial for many, especially the many towns that are at its epicenter.

One such town that looked like it could use some help was Brownfield, TX (population 9,500). Brownfield’s downtown had more vacancies than occupancies and almost looked like a ghost town. It’s sad, terribly sad to see a town of that size in such bad shape. As I sped out of town I wondered why it looked like it was dying when across the border Lovington had so much more vibrancy.

“Why do some towns boom, even as others die?” continues to drive me on my quest across the country.

We Want Back Our Hospital!

Their hospital closed in the late 60s and in most towns it would have stayed closed. People would have moved on, chalking it up to a typical occurrence in rural towns. In my travels I’ve yet to see where someone has reopened something as complex as a hospital. That was, until last week.

Lovington and nearby Tatum resolved to reopen their hospital, creating a new hospital district. Today the Nor-Lea General Hospital is a thriving entity in Lovington, NM, employing 180. It recently completed a $7 million expansion, draws patients from a 90 mile radius and does 95% of its revenue as an outpatient facility.

Its CEO, David Shaw, who moved to Lovington 5 years ago, was selected as Lovington’s Citizen of the Year at the event I spoke at. He is dynamically expanding the vision of the hospital and also of the community.

The people of Lovington and Tatum showed a real “Can Do” spirit in not giving up on their closed hospital. It is often the real key to success of successful towns compared to others.

Brian Urlacher’s Hometown

Lovington, NM (population 9471) is a county seat town in a county that is approximately 40 miles wide by 110 miles long (4393 sq. mi.), four times bigger than Rhode Island. It is a BIG county. It started as a ranching town, boomed when oil was found in the 20s, but is always going thru the busts that inevitably occur in the oil patch. It’s starting to boom again. Retail sales are up over 40% from two years ago.

In the past several years dairies have become an emerging cluster for the region. Goff Dairy, a locally owned family operation has been milking for over 40 years. Its success has encouraged other dairies from ND, NE, CA and even overseas to move here. Dairy farms are much larger here than found in WI, which I wrote about March 30th, ranging from 400 to 4500 cows (Goff Dairy).

These new dairies have resulted in resurgence in agricultural production, with farmers raising feed for the cows. A cheddar cheese plant was moved here from the Dakotas in the 90s. Several other service businesses have sprung up due to all of the cows and diaries. It is a classic case of how a cluster can impact an area.

Brian Urlacher, the Chicago Bear All-Pro Linebacker, is from Lovington and gives back in excess of $100,000/year to the local school system. It’s nice to see that he hasn’t forgotten his roots.

If you’re in Lovington on the 4th of July be sure to attend their “World’s Greatest Lizard Race.” They race ‘em all, small geckos to giant iguanas. It’d be a hoot to see.

Big City Blues

In the past month both Chicago and New York Magazines have featured articles about the higher level of stress in large cities and bigger states. New York’s title was “You’ll never have stress in this town again: 91 ways to kick the tension habit.” Both cities seem very preoccupied with too much stress in their metros.

The fact that there is more stress in large cities didn’t surprise me at all. In fact I think that part of the success of my book Boomtown USA, is that so many people are looking at getting out of the rat race of large cities to more tranquil places like my agurbs®.

The average number of psychologists per 100,000 residents in the USA is 31. The top 10 states with from 42 to 161 per 100,000 are DC, VT, MN, MA, NY, CO, IL, RI, NH, and PA. The lowest 10 states with from 11 to 18 per 100,000 are: LO, MS, SC, NV, AL, AR, OK, TX, KY and IN.

What was particularly interesting to me was that the top 10 states with most psychologists have 57 agurbs® compared to 84 agurbs® in the lowest. Also of interest is that, with the exception of CO, the highest ratio of psychologists to residents all voted for Kerry in the past presidential election. The lowest ratio states…all voted for Bush.

From Moo to You!

There is an old joke in agriculture, “How do you make a million dollars in agriculture?” “You start with $5 million!” George Shetler was like a lot of small farmers. He was going broke slowly, painfully slowly. In the 20 year period from 1974 to 1994 almost 400 farms/week went bankrupt. And Shetler would have probably gone down that path if he hadn’t made a shift from commodity production to niche marketing.

Shetler was a dairy farmer, 25 miles from Traverse City, MI, who milked 40 cows. He was a small fry in an industry that was dominated by giants. To survive he had to do something radically different.

In 1995 he surveyed local food retailers to see if there was a market for his grass fed milk. He wrote out a one page business plan which included one infamous line: “Pray!!” He built a micro creamery out of used equipment and started delivering his own milk.

Today he has 38 cows and sells 1,300 gallons of milk and dairy products twice a week to 50 stores in the region. His delivery truck has a set of Texas longhorns bolted to the roof of the cab, which is painted as you would expect in a black-and-white Holstein pattern. The slogan on the side of the truck is “From Moo to You.”

Today he has seven employees and has grown revenues by over four times. Two of his oldest sons have moved back to the farm. Instead of throwing in the towel George Shetler goal now is, “to have something here for the grandkids.”

Shetler is a great example of the path that more farmers should be going down. Unless you can constantly be a low cost producer of commodity products, in the long term commodity production is extremely difficult. By developing niches like Shetler, a farmer can differentiate their product and develop a brandable product that commands higher prices and better margins.

Dallas Smart Money was Wrong

I’m sitting at the DFW Airport this morning waiting on a plane to Lubbock. It is absolutely the worst hub airport as I always seem to have to get onto the tram that links the various terminals as opposed to being able to quickly walk to connecting gates at other airports. Today I had to go from C21 to B9, another 15 minute tram ride. I was at school in Dallas when DFW was being built, remembering the excitement of its completion.

At the time the smart money thought that DFW was the 8th wonder of the world. At the same time they also thought that Southwest Airlines didn’t stand a chance against mighty Braniff. They were wrong on both counts.

DFW was built in the pre-security world. The terminals were designed in giant circles so that passengers could drive right up to their gate, park their car and get onto their plane. It was a great system…for about 5 years. But in today’s world, it is a mess.

Those same experts didn’t understand how a pipsqueak airline like Southwest, with only 3 planes, could possibly compete against mighty Braniff Airlines with its hundreds, if not thousands of planes. When Southwest had to shrink to only 2 planes because of Braniff’s competition, it only reinforced their expert opinion. Again they were wrong.

Competitive environments change. What looks like a sure thing, often isn’t. The experts were wrong. Towns need to take the same approach. Often the sure thing, isn’t. And the LT company that is going to be in your town forever, isn’t. Times change and so must communities.

Traverse City—A Golden Eagle

It’s always a thrill for me to get a chance to tour one of the top 100 (Golden Eagle) agurbs® that our research identified as outstanding communities. I always go with a bit of trepidation, not wanting to find that our Golden Eagle might be a Mole instead. Traverse City, MI didn’t let me down.

I could tell that it was a special kind of town when I walked into the airport. I have seen a lot of airports in the past year and theirs is one of the coolest I have seen for a town of 14,532. It utilizes the local stone as an accent to the northern lodge look for the airport. It is definitely not a sterile, typical airport.

Bob Gluszewski, Area Manager for Consumers Energy gave me a whirlwind tour on our way to the Rural Partners of Michigan Conference on small towns and rural development. Traverse City is a regional draw with lots of big boxes, but what I really loved was their vibrant downtown area. I didn’t see any vacancies and noticed a number of dwelling units both in upstairs apartments and nearby condos that are helping to create a very unique “sense of place.” They are redoing their old opera house into a community center. They do a summer music festival in the downtown area that is nationally known. I rated it as the second best downtown I’ve seen of this size, second only to Oxford, MS.

They’ve developed as regional retailing, ag, golf and medical center. Their many area lakes make them a great tourism destination. They’ve leveraged their status as the Cherry Capital of the World (70% of the cooking cherries and 50% of the sweet cherries are grown within a 50 mile radius) to develop the Cherry Festival, which is held for one week around July 4th to bring in over 130,000 visitors each year. The area has recently also become a winery cluster with 14 already operating, including one owned by Madonna’s dad.

A local family is building a new baseball stadium to host the Beach Bums, a new class A team. Great Wolf Lodge has a huge waterpark and there are plans for another 2 more in town. Do I sense another cluster starting?

It was quite impressive for an agurb® of less than 15,000 population.

ND Final Thoughts—Renewal thru Angels

When Scott Molander, Mike Fladeland, Deb Dragseth and others were touring me thru western ND and eastern MT, I marveled at the natural beauty of the region. I was most impressed with the people that I met, especially their attitude toward trying to do things for the betterment of their communities and region.

One thing though that really bothered me from that week was a bumper sticker that several people told me about. It obviously made an impression upon many people because of the number of times I heard about it and the fact that the bumper sticker was probably last seen in 1985, over 20 years ago.

So what could make this kind of impression? And what can we do about it today?

The bumper sticker was fairly straightforward. It said, “Lord, Give Us One More Oil Boom. We Promise Not to Blow it This Time!”

Today the Williston Basin in western ND and eastern MT is going thru another oil boom, their third in 50 years. And just like the first two, this one is going to end in a bust at some point in time, although no one can tell you when that bust will occur. But, it will be ugly, just like the first two. And, it’s not a question of IF, but WHEN!

My question is: Will there be any lasting benefits from this current boom of $50+ oil?

Scott and I spent a lot of time talking about this subject in our 700 miles together in the car driving from town to town, giving talks and touring communities. He has been involved in an angel investor network in Indiana and I think that such a network could work in the region that we visited. It would take coordination, determination and salesmanship, but I think that it could be something that could act as a catalyst to help foster more entrepreneurial activity.

And I can’t believe that it wouldn’t be an attractive investment for some of the many people who are going to be making “windfall profits” in the coming years with this current oil boom. People who love their towns and region, understand that they’ve got to continue to progress or they run the risk of their towns continuing to “age in place.”

If Scott or someone else decides to put something together, I’d like to invest. That’s how sure I am of the merit and chance of success that it has from what I saw on my trip.

Mushroom Season

Well it's that time of year again. Mushroom season!

It is one of my favorites. It is a wonderful time to be out in the woods with the birds chirping and the buds starting to pop. It is a time of renewal and newness.

My only disappointment is that once again, for probably the 20th straight year, my wife found the first mushroom. She also found the most. Even though I found only a few of the 20 or so that we found, I don't mind eating 1/2 of them.

Well, there's always next year. Maybe I'll find that first one.

Selling 15 Million/Year that You Can Get for Free!

He got the nickname, “The Badger”, because he was always battling guys bigger than him in his days playing basketball in North Dakota. And Scott Molander never lost that competitive spirit, even as he has moved onto great success in the business world.

He graduated from DSU in 1988 and “wanted to get out and see the world”, taking a job with Footlocker. His first job with the company was in Chicago. He freaked out when he got to his first toll booth outside of Chicago calling home to ask what you did at them. At his first day at an inner city store, when a customer asked him, “Is it ok if I take these shoes and come back to pay you later?” he didn’t think anything about it. His boss quickly set him straight that he wasn’t working in Crosby, ND anymore.

He quickly became retail savvy, moving onto running a store. He traded hats with other stores in the country, quickly taking his store from #1800 in hat wear to #63. But he got fed up with the politics of the big company, yearning to do something on his own.

He and another Footlocker employee, Glen Campbell also from a small town near Cape Girardeau, MO, decided that they should do something together. Glen was a great salesman and Scott was the finance and accounting part of the equation. They looked at buying a sports store franchise but finally Scott asked, “Glen what if we only did hats?” They developed a business plan, spent over a year shopping it to investors and finally got one of Scott’s former business professors from ND to assist them, raising $110,000 to start their first store on November 3, 1995 in Lafayette, IN. They did $110,000 in sales during that first Christmas season, often sleeping in the back of the store to save on the cost of a hotel. Someone with that type of dedication and willingness to sacrifice is a big step ahead of most.

Scott told some interesting stories of his start-up to the students at the DSU Entrepreneurship Conference. When he was thinking of quitting his job at Footlocker to start Hat World he went home to tell his parents. His dad’s reaction was, “You are going to quit your job and do WHAT? I can go down to the feed store and get a new hat every week, if I wanted one.” His future wife’s reaction when she met him two months after starting that first store, “If I were you, I’d keep my day job.” His mom’s reaction? She didn’t say a thing. She just wrote out a check so that she could be his first investor. Don’t you love moms?

His mom and those first investors didn’t do too badly either. A $2,000 investment became $80,000 when he and Glen sold the company last year for $177 million after it had grown to 500+ stores, doing $300 million in sales. At $20 per hat that is 15 million hats sold!

I traveled with Scott all over western ND for four days and here are some of my favorite quotes from him, “Our goal was to build a great company that was fun to work at. We weren’t focused on the money at all.” He still gets choked up talking about the “kids who joined him at Hat World. Now they have grey hair just like me.”

“Wal-Mart and others tried to go after us. They would come into our store, buy a hat and then blow up a photo of the receipt to show that they were selling their hats for $10 per hat less. We beat them on service, selection and training. Besides, who is going to go into a Wal-Mart to buy a hat? It is an impulse item.”

Today Scott is giving back to his hometown of Crosby, ND and to his alma mater Dickinson State University. My guess is that he will start another runaway success like Hat World in the near future.

Leveraging Coal Resources to Their Fullest

Beulah, ND has the highest per capita income in the state. Lignite coal lies close to the surface of the surrounding rolling hills. The town has several electric generation plants and one of only two coal gasification plants in the world. The other is in South Africa. Jobs are plentiful and pay well.

Many communities would just sit back and “let the good times roll.” But a community that is the hometown of Jerome Strom, who I blogged about yesterday, isn’t the type of town to just sit back and let things happen on their own.

Beulah has contracted with Dr. Marian Chertow of the Yale University Center for Industrial Ecology to develop a plan for all of the by-products that could be harvested. Some are obvious such as anhydrous ammonia and ammonia sulfate. But her study, which is to be presented on May 1st will hopefully offer other ideas for Beulah and the surrounding area.

Duke Rosendahl, head of economic development for neighboring Hazen emailed me after my talk of why a community can NEVER stop doing economic development, “The work is NEVER done... there's no slack time .. take it (the job of growing) seriously because.. most others won't ..It only takes a few to make things happen.... but those few are rare and precious and have the "can do" spirit that makes a community a winner.”

I saw that type of spirit in Beulah.

Giving Back to the Roots of Their Success

“What we did in our business was because of the deep inbreeding of principles that we got from growing up in small towns in North Dakota and from our education at Dickinson State University,” is how Jerome Strom relayed the success of he and his late wife Rosie Ann in building Yale Investment Company. “Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.”

He and his wife met at DSU, at the time a small teacher’s college where 85% of graduates ended up teaching. The Stroms also followed this tradition, teaching in Oregon and then in California. They started a restaurant, Jerry’s Burgers, which they ran for 10 years. In 1974 they saw a need for supplemental retirement income, starting Yale Investments. Their specialty was income producing property, primarily apartments.

Even though the Stroms were making their living in Palo Alto, they never forgot their roots. They have given back, providing the largest scholarship fund at DSU, sponsoring the entrepreneurial conference and providing funding for other projects. This giving back is something I find often with small town individuals. They never seem to forget where they came from and are very generous in giving back.

Mr. Strom’s philosophy in business was particularly inspiring to me, “Find a need within your own community. Find a way to be of service to people who live there. Meet their needs and you will find the rewards are more than you can imagine.”

We’ll do it Ourselves Town

I wish that there were more towns with a “Get out of the way, cause we are going to do this ourselves,” when they face obstacles in their way. One such town is Watford City, ND (population 1,435). A small town like this has to utilize ALL of their resources, including state and federal funding, to be able to accomplish projects that are important for the community. But too often when those funding sources fail to produce, many towns give up. Not Watford City!

I was amazed at what can be accomplished with this type of approach. Watford City has built a new aquatic park for $1.5 million; a 30,000 sf multi-purpose building for ice skating, soccer and other indoor events (cost $1.0 million); a tourist visitors center ($1.0 million); and new country club house. And all in the past five years! They also have a wonderful library, wellness center and 22,500 sf meeting area that includes a 10,000 sf auditorium and racquetball courts.

The story of how they did the tourism welcome center was particularly interesting. The town wanted to tap into the tourists that were headed to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Lake Sakakawea. They wanted to build a nice welcome center but didn’t have the funds to do so. They finally put together a deal with the municipally owned liquor store and local museum to build it. It is the only combination of such that I have seen, but it works. And works very well!

Hopefully more towns will follow Watford City’s approach of “If we can’t find help, we will just do it ourselves.”

The Cure for Higher Prices is Higher Prices

Sidney, MT is going thru a new oil boom. The city has a vitality and newness about it. It is amazing what $55/barrel oil can do.

In the early 1980s, at the peak of the last boom, “Seven rigs/day was considered a lot,” according to Leslie Messer of the county economic development agency. “Today we’ve got 19 rigs going. We’ve got one company that has 400 well staked out in the county, ready to drill.”

These new drilling rigs are drilling down 9,000 to 10,000 feet and then drilling out horizontally in four directions up to 2 1/2 miles away. Taxable sales in North Dakota’s oil extraction sector were up 252% in 2004 compared to 2003. Amazing technology and high oil prices will result in more oil production and ultimately lower prices.