Notebook
August 9th, 2019 by Gary Osberg

It is a perfect 10 today.  Sweater weather in August thanks to the cool air from our neighbor to the north, Canada.  I hope to see you tonight at the Downtown St. Cloud Art Crawl.  It runs from 5 until 9.

I am a recovering entrepreneur. I couldn’t work for the man, I had to be the man. Every one of my attempts failed. Early in my career, I read an article in an in-flight magazine. I learned that 25% of the population are “risk-takers”. All of the entrepreneurs come out of this group as do all of the criminals. I am not sure where I inherited the trait since neither of my parents were entrepreneurs, but my mother’s brother Eldon was. I was a juvenile delinquent. My first attempt at business was Draftech, Inc. a contract drafting service run out of my basement in our home in Coon Rapids. It was not very long before I went to work selling office furniture for General Office Products. My second attempt was an energy management company “Office Environmental Systems”. My office was in the Allstate building behind the car wash on Division Street in St. Cloud. I was probably the only one in the State of Minnesota out there on straight commission trying to sell computerized energy management systems to owners of large office buildings. I sold three systems in three years and then I went back to selling office furniture in 1982.

I have a collection of business cards that fills a ring binder.  I started working here in on the third floor of  Wimmer Hall in 1999.  I just received delivery of another box of calling cards for Minnesota Public Radio.  I go through a box of cards every couple of years.  I hope to go through a few more before I call it quits.

Live from Here this week is another rebroadcast of an earlier show.  You can see the fall lineup at livefromhere.org 

Oh, I almost forgot, Upsala Heritage Days starts tonight with a free concert in the city park.   The “Best Central Minnesota Small Town Parade” starts tomorrow at 10:30.  Lunch at the Borgstrom House is awesome.  I hope to see you there too.

“We all find time to do what we really want to do.”  William Feather

Comments are closed.