Oh, we got trou­ble. Or at least we have for the past two years as COVID has impact­ed near­ly every aspect of all our lives. But as always, a sil­ver lin­ing is start­ing to become clear. Or in this case, I guess, a brass lin­ing – com­plete with 76 trom­bones lead­ing the big parade, with 110...Read More

The hos­pi­tal­i­ty and ser­vice indus­try took – and con­tin­ues to take – a mas­sive blow due to the pan­dem­ic. Cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion have been the name of the game for stay­ing afloat amid man­dates and ill­ness. For FINNEGANS Brew Co. – one of the very first craft brew­eries in the Twin Cities – those con­cepts...Read More

I’ve nev­er been a big fan of rodents, but when they come bear­ing com­pli­ments, that’s anoth­er story. When I opened my email last week I was greet­ed with a delight­ful sur­prise: a mes­sage from Lau­ra Numeroff, cre­ator of the beloved “If You Give a Mouse a Cook­ie” books. You remem­ber them: the New York Times-best­selling children’s...Read More

It was while watch­ing “A Christ­mas Sto­ry” for around the 800th time over the week­end that I real­ized I should prob­a­bly offer Ral­phie a job. Sure, there are some down­sides, most­ly that he’s fic­tion­al, lives in the 1940s and also is nine years old. But the upsides are plen­ti­ful. In his quest to per­suade his par­ents...Read More

It’s not exact­ly break­ing news that the past two years have been tough on the media. And in Min­neso­ta, prob­a­bly no out­let has faced stronger head­winds recent­ly than Upsize Mag­a­zine. When the region­al busi­ness magazine’s co-founder and pub­lish­er Wes Bergstrom died in Spring 2020, the pub­li­ca­tion went on hia­tus, fac­ing an uncer­tain future. Enter Andy Tel­li­john....Read More

Netflix’s mas­sive hit “Squid Game” is packed with nail-nib­bling ten­sion, heart­less dou­ble-cross­es and cut-throat (lit­er­al­ly) com­pe­ti­tion. If you haven’t seen it, imag­ine the chaos and cal­cu­la­tion of a throng of peo­ple angling to score the last Tick­le Me Elmo on the shelf in 1996, only with a lot more green tracksuits. Mil­lions of words have been...Read More

With stay-at-home orders, trav­el bans and social dis­tanc­ing guide­lines in place, it’s no sur­prise that the tourism and event indus­try took a hit dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. As we’ve come to see over the last 18 months, the pro­fes­sion­als in this space are noth­ing if not resilient, cre­ative and hard­work­ing. And their efforts are pay­ing off,...Read More

Scroll through LinkedIn or flip open any busi­ness mag­a­zine and it seems like the cor­po­rate world col­lec­tive­ly just dis­cov­ered a brand-new con­cept: Empathy. And it’s no won­der: If ever there was a time for lead­ers to flex their emo­tion­al-intel­li­gence mus­cles and try to under­stand what their col­leagues, cus­tomers and com­mu­ni­ties are going through, it’s now. Peo­ple are...Read More

Nav­i­gat­ing health­care is com­plex, and per­haps nev­er more intim­i­dat­ing or bur­den­some than the past cou­ple of years. The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has swept the world with tragedy and immense pres­sure on our health­care sys­tems; men­tal health chal­lenges and ill­ness­es are on the rise; and the cost and com­plex­i­ty of nav­i­gat­ing the many options indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies...Read More

Recent­ly I took a look at PR role mod­els in pop cul­ture and came up fair­ly emp­ty. Yes, there were a few exag­ger­at­ed char­ac­ters like Saman­tha Jones from “Sex and the City.” But if they didn’t exact­ly spark a rush of peo­ple apply­ing for PR jobs, who did? The like­ly answer: fic­tion­al jour­nal­ists. In the 70s,...Read More