Letter from the Editor

March 2011

Going Their Own Way

Who hasn’t daydreamed at some point of their career about chucking the 9 to 5 grind to open a business? Launching a new business is the American Dream, if not the Minnesota Dream. In the past four years alone, nearly 230,000 new business filings have been registered with the Minnesota Secretary of State Office, including a record 63,338 at the height of the recession in 2009.

While many of those businesses will never get off the ground, they represent the hopes of people wanting to create better lives for themselves and their families.

This issue of Trends features three minority entrepreneurs who are running successful small businesses. While minority-owned businesses represent a small percentage of all businesses in the state (6.2 percent), their numbers are growing. In 2007, Minnesota had more than 31,100 minority-owned firms that generated $5.8 billion in sales.

One of those businesses is owned by Tiffany Wilson, who operates V.I.P. Hair and Nail Salon on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. Wilson, who is pictured on the cover of this issue of Trends, has learned what every entrepreneur learns sooner or later. Running your own business is not for the faint-hearted. It’s a 365-day-a-year job.

Another story in this issue looks at green entrepreneurs John Van Dine, founder of SAGE Electrochromics in Faribault, and Sergey Selifonov and Olga Selifonova, who launched Golden Valley-based Segetis in 2006. You might say Van Dine and the Selifonovs were green when green wasn’t cool. They didn’t set out to be green pioneers. Instead, they were entrepreneurs whose products happened to be green.

Elsewhere, we look at careers in the fitness field — an occupation that is expected to grow briskly in the next decade — and examine how Minnesota’s emergence from the Great Recession compares with other recent downturns.

A reader survey is also  included in this issue. We encourage you to take the survey online. Let us know how we’re doing. Your opinion counts.

Monte Hanson
Editor