Get your first look at Surly's $30M brewery in southeast Minneapolis

At the new Minneapolis Holiday Market, go for the potato pancakes, stay for the weisswurst and apple dumplings.

 

Source: http://www.startribune.com/

Which wine’s a winner for Thanksgiving?

Local wines would be another good theme. If you took advantage of our fine fall weather to go leaf-peeping in the Virginia and Maryland countryside, you may have returned home with a few bottles of vino. Thanksgiving dinner would be a good time to open them. You might even impress your out-of-town relatives with your stories about local wine country.

Whichever theme you choose (country, region, global), some pointers:

■ Bubbles go with everything. Champagne, cava, prosecco, franciacorta and all sorts of sparkling wines and ciders are exceptionally food-friendly. More important, they cleanse your palate (that “scrubbing bubbles” commercial comes to mind), leaving you refreshed for the next bite. So begin the celebration with bubbly, and don’t forget to take the bottle to the table when you sit down.

■ Look for a fruity white wine. Riesling’s acidity acts like sparkling wine’s bubbles, and you can choose from bone-dry to slightly sweet Rieslings depending on your mood or audience. For a local theme, viognier or a white blend based on petit manseng can play off any citrus notes on the menu (as well as the cranberries). If you’re looking for more heft in a white, a good barrel-fermented chardonnay can match the strongest flavors on the menu, as long as the fruit and acidity aren’t overwhelmed by oak flavors.

■ Certain red wines are extremely versatile with food. These are generally lighter reds, such as pinot noir, barbera or gamay (the grape of Beaujolais). Moving up the spectrum toward heavier wines, syrah and nebbiolo are good choices. The heaviest reds, such as cabernet sauvignon and merlot, are often quite oaky; they may match the turkey but might not cozy up next to all the fixings.

■ The dessert wine should be sweeter than the dessert. A rich Vin Santo-style wine, a Pedro Ximenez sherry, or a fortified dessert wine such as tawny Port or Madeira would be ideal with pumpkin pie.


Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/

5 Ways to get Buyers to Come to You

 1.   Refine your niche: About five years ago, Matt Sonnhalter narrowed the focus of his marketing agency from serving B2B manufacturing accounts to working only with companies that sell products to professional tradesmen. He dubbed it a “business-to-tradesman” or B2T agency. It’s had a tremendous impact, bringing in new leads and business from large global brands. It even landed him a spot on one business magazine’s list of top agencies.

Some business owners resist niche marketing fearing they’ll miss opportunities in other areas. But focusing on a niche helps you stand out from the competition and eliminate potential objections about doing business with you.

  2.   Create a compelling free offer: A great way to start drawing customers to you is giving them information they want in the form of a free report. This serves two purposes. First, it helps build credibility. It also lets you provide prospects with just enough information so they believe you know what you’re doing, but not so much that they can’t do without you.

To choose an attention-grabbing topic, consider your target audience’s biggest pain point. A good approach is to tell readers what to do and what not to do, but not how to do it.

 3.   Direct prospects to a killer landing page: Create a page on your website where prospects can get your free report – called a landing page. This should include a catchy headline, bullet points to capture the reader’s curiosity and convey benefits, an opt-in box where visitors provide an email address and possibly other information about themselves, and a thank you. Then heavily promote your free offer on your website’s home page, on social media and elsewhere.

 4.    Develop and launch drip marketing messages: Getting prospects to show initial interest in a free report is just a first step. Now it’s time to develop your “drip” marketing messages that will convert these prospects into paying clients. These nurture messages will continue to build trust and credibility.

“You can send two types of messages; timed and broadcast,” says Satterfield, who is also author of a book called The One Week Marketing Plan. “Timed messages are sent based on the number of days since a person first requested your free report. Immediately after such a request, for example, you send a thank you email. Then one day later, email message #2 goes out asking if they have any questions. Two days after that, they get email #3, and so on.”

Broadcast messages are sent to everyone in your database at the same time, the advantage being that it can be timely. For example, you could send a message to everyone about an upcoming event.

5.     Attract traffic to your site: One of the quickest ways to do this is by using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, also called search ads. This can be effective even if you have just a few hundred dollars or less to spend per month. One advantage is speed. When someone searches for something using the keywords you’ve selected, your ad can immediately appear. You can advertise on Google and Bing, or social media sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn.


Source: https://www.score.org

Is your vocabulary half empty or half full?

Perspective is a funny thing, and it goes beyond the glass half full/half empty debate. We should always be careful to analyze language to make sure we’re seeing things from every angle.

Take, for example, recent talk about the city of Forest Lake’s taxes. Before the city began moving forward with bringing a YMCA to town, the preliminary levy for 2015 was scheduled to come in at $8.32 million, an increase of 3.53 percent over this year’s property tax levy. On the other hand, thanks to rising property values, the levy will be spread over a greater tax capacity than it was this year, resulting in a tax rate that’s 4.5 percent lower than in 2014.

So, is the city raising taxes or lowering them?

Perhaps it depends on your point of view. If you own a home worth, say, $100,000, you were taxed about $320 by the city in 2014. If your home’s value stays the same next year and the city doesn’t go ahead with the YMCA, your city bill will likely be $15 lower. It’s hard not to call that a tax cut.

However, your home value probably won’t stay flat. Property values in the city increased dramatically. If your home increases in value by 6 percent, what was a $15 decrease turns into almost that much in a tax bill increase because your home’s value went up more than the tax rate went down. At this point, it’s easier to look at the $8.32 million levy as a tax increase, as keeping the levy flat would have resulted in a flatter tax bill for you.

Of course, if the City Council does strike a deal with the YMCA, then the point is moot; it’s a tax increase just about any way you look at it. However, the point still stands: there’s more than one way to look at almost any situation, and we’d do well to recognize that when someone frames something through a certain lens, he or she may be doing so out of personal bias, intentionally or not.

You often see this phenomenon during campaign season, a biannual corollary to fall that all members of a republic must suffer through. Differing sides of the abortion debate label themselves as “pro-life” or “pro-choice,” implying that the other side must be “pro-death” or “anti-choice.” During Minnesota’s 2012 vote on gay marriage, those against the amendment called themselves “pro-marriage freedom,” while those who wanted the constitutional amendment to pass took up the mantle of “pro-family.” I’m not here to promote one group over the other, but I will tell you that I spoke with members on both sides of the debate who tried to use language and labeling to woo followers implicitly – to win the debate before the debate could even be had.

This doesn’t always have to be a sinister thing. Of course you want your movement to have a positive name and a positive message, and if that earns you support, you’ve been doing a good job of messaging. Just make sure that someone’s not trying to use language and a lack of perspective to deceive you or alienate someone else.

In the two social debates that I brought up earlier, I’ve heard a lot of outlandish claims, from the idea that all anti-abortion advocates hate women to the idea that pro-gay marriage people want to undermine “traditional” marriage. These sorts of arguments are petty and an attempt to swerve the public away from the real issues at the heart of these debates. No one wants to be seen as supporting misogyny, nor does anyone want to be seen as associating with a cabal dedicated to undermining the country’s moral fabric, even if that’s not really what those movements are about. By using language and a lack of perspective, the less savory members of these groups shut down real discussion and attempt to win converts outside of the realm of ideas, dumbing our nation down in the process.

Rather than be swept away by a one-sided argument, listen to your better impulses. Look at as many points of view as you can, and you’ll find yourself better informed and able to relate to more people with empathy.

Source: http://forestlaketimes.com/2014/09/17/is-your-vocabulary-half-empty-or-half-full/

The Cold Truth About The Future Of Advertising

Anyone with a Facebook account is quite familiar with the "ALS Ice Bucket Challenge." For those of you still holding out, "the Challenge" is an awareness-creating, fund-raising initiative that has been wildly successful in raising money for the cause. In the last month alone, "the Challenge" has raised over $40 million in donations. By comparison, there was $2 million donated over the same period last year. By any measure, this is success. It also gives us a glimpse at what the future of advertising could look like.

Depending on the source, we have gone from being exposed to approximately 500 advertisements per day in the 1970's to about 5,000 per day today. How many of the ads that you saw on this very day can you remember? I thought so. Now, how many of your Facebook friends' videos from today can you remember? I bet ALL OF THEM, and that's the point. It's not the magnitude of daily exposure that matters, it is what is registering in our brains that counts.

Today's economy is being driven more and more by this type of "Peer-to-Peer" initiative. We hear all the time that the best form of advertising is word of mouth, and that is exactly what this is. Our friends are advertising a message to us and our other peers, and we are responding. Social media advertisements are moving at the speed of a click, and thousands are on the other end to receive the message.

While these particular "Challenge" postings are free (anybody can do it!), it should be noted that paid advertisements on social media sites are very inexpensive. Ads can run all day, and for as little as a dollar a day. This isn't new, and in fact the delivery methods are changing about as quickly as they can be written about. As a company trying to promote goods and services, the choices can be maddening. The alternative of not participating in social media advertising? That can be costing you in lost sales.

If YOUR Company is spending thousands of dollars per trade publication ad, chances are that you are not even being provided with the sales lead information in a way that's meaningful and actionable. By comparison, the social media "pay per click" fee of (literally) pennies, comes complete with the lead information - directly to YOU. Tough to beat.

In today's social media vernacular, we "tweet" our messages, "pin" our pictures, and use something called a "hashtag" (I don't want to understand that one). Who knows what we will be doing tomorrow. The world is getting smaller everyday, and the word of mouth is getting faster.

If you are ignoring the ever evolving way in which advertised information is being delivered to the masses, you might as well stick your head in a bucket of ice water. More importantly, YOUR Company is missing out on great opportunities to greatly enhance your message.

Source: http://www.mybrandperformance.com

FFA students win big with landscape project

The Forest Lake FFA competitive landscape display took Reserve Grand Champion honors at the 2014 Minnesota State Fair.

Students began constructing “A Grand Entry” the Friday before the fair and continued their efforts through Tuesday.

This year brought a new challenge as the exhibit was moved outdoors near the CHS Miracle of Birth Center and FFA Leadership Center. The students were given a 14’ x 14’ space to work in.

“I am very proud of the hard work and student leadership that this project brings every year. The students really enjoy putting their skills and creative minds to the test in this competitive activity,” Forest Lake agriculture teacher Veronica Ward said.

The project is an extension of classroom instruction as students spend summer hours in the Forest Lake Agricultural Education Department designing and building the exhibit.

The display is evaluated on artistic design principles, identification of plant material with growth and care information, and quality of construction.

Plants and other materials were donated by Twin Lakes Landscapes of Columbus, Pro Care Companies of Forest Lake and Abrahamson Nursery of Scandia.

The local chapter is also represented in the CHS Miracle of Birth Center, where Joe Ramstad is a volunteer barnyard attendant, and in the FFA livestock show, where sophomore Kyra Quillen shows her sheep.

Personality: Sometimes It is Personal

Everyone is different and unique in their own ways, but it’s also true that we do share an enormous amount in common.  Just think about who you know, and who your friends are. Have you ever noticed how certain types of people seem to be drawn to you, or conversely, how you are drawn to certain people? One of the foundations of any kind of social relationship is having shared interests, as it creates a sense of understanding, an initial connection. Think of it as a starting off point.

But just as it’s possible to share interests and hobbies, we can also share traits and values. This is where your personality comes in, which affects everything from how you behave, to how you think, and how you feel.

While every individual is unique, we’ve also recognized that it’s possible to categorize people into different personality types based on psychographics. Each type has their own tendencies and value systems, and an understanding of these can shine a light on why someone does what they do, and also provide insight in how to best interact with them. It provides a general framework, a heuristic, if you will, which makes it possible to draw general conclusions.

Your personality is a strong influence on how you interact with others. Basically, your personality affects your communication style, which affects how other people perceive you. Whether you want to project a certain image, or it just happens naturally, a knowledge of your own style can be illuminating.

The four main styles are:

    Emotive
    Directive
    Reflective
    Supportive

These styles are organized in a quadrant along 2 axes, dominance and sociability. Combined with emotional intelligence, an awareness of the different communication styles is an invaluable tool in all of your interpersonal interactions. In business alone, it affects everything from marketing, to leadership, HR, and management.

Source: http://www.smallbusinessbc.ca/