Minnesota exports rise 2% to $5 billion in 1Q

Minnesota’s manufactured exports rose 2 percent to $5 billion in the first quarter, though sales to its two biggest markets faltered.

The uptick alleviated worries that the increasingly critical export market might falter as it did during several months last year.

Sales to Minnesota’s top trading partner, Canada, fell 12 percent to $1.2 billion as orders lagged for mineral fuels, machinery, beverages, ore and vehicle parts, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) said Thursday.

Companies such as snowmobile and all-terrain vehicle maker Arctic Cat recently reported that 30 percent of their revenues were negatively affected by Canada’s difficult currency exchange rates. Company officials said the problematic currency translation rate is expected to hurt that company for the rest of this year. But it was not clear from the report by DEED if other companies have similar concerns about Canada.

Minnesota’s second-largest trading partner, China, also bought less during the first quarter. Exports to China fell 2 percent to $523 million.

On the upside, Mexico, Japan, ­Belgium, Germany and Australia gobbled up Minnesota goods at a hearty rate, with percentages increasing from 23 percent to 49 percent from the first quarter of last year.

Mexico, which is Minnesota’s third-largest trading partner, bought $433 million worth of goods, up 49 percent. That increase was driven by an uptick in demand for Minnesota-made machinery, vehicle components and electrical equipment.

Exports have become an increasing part of Minnesota’s economy and helped boost the state’s beleaguered manufacturing sector during and after the Great Recession.

State and civic leaders have pushed small- and medium-size businesses to consider selling their goods overseas and have set up teams to assist them in exploring possible market opportunities. In several cases state officials have set up satellite trade offices in other countries to help Minnesota businesses more easily make connections.

“Minnesota exporters saw strong gains in our traditional markets during the first quarter,” DEED Commissioner Katie Clark Sieben said in a statement. “But they also made headway into newer markets for Minnesota products, with exports growing 11 percent in the Middle East and 16 percent in the Australia-Pacific region.”

Source: http://www.startribune.com

Stop Accepting Advice

According to the weather app it's 57 degrees and mostly cloudy. I was hoping to sit outside, get some work done and soak in some vitamin D.

I looked outside. Not a cloud in the sky and the sun was warm. Obviously the weather app was wrong.

Can you guess where I am right now? Outside on the deck!

I'm glad I didn't take that expert advice at face value.

There is so much expert advice being offered to business owners.

It could be about a "sure fire step-by-step system" that absolutely needs to be followed or you will never fill your next workshop. Or the 5-key elements that every single website must have and if not, don't even bother having a website at all. Or the exact script to use in a sales call because if you don't use it nobody will ever buy anything from you and you will be broke.

Most of these experts, unlike the weather app I was using, know what they are talking about and absolutely offer valuable advice. The question to ask yourself is: is the advice you are being offered right for you AND your business right now?

Did you notice that I highlighted the word AND in that last sentence?

Let me explain. Sometimes there is something that you could do for your business that is exactly right for where you want your business to go, but it doesn't work with who you are or what you are willing to do at that time. Sometimes the reverse is true. Advice is offered to you that works with your schedule, what you want to be doing, how you want to be doing it, but won't yield the results you want.

It's vital that whatever you decide to focus your time and energy on is what's right for you AND your business, and if it's not that you rethink your priorities and shift your plan and expectations so that it does.

Here's a suggestion to help you check in with your own reality and decide what advice to follow and what to let pass you by. Take a few minutes to create a vision for yourself of what you want your business to look like and especially get clear about what you want to be doing on a day-to-day basis.

Once you understand that assess all of your decisions based on that vision and determine if accepting that advice, doing that program, attending that event, marketing in that way is what's right for you and your business.

Source: http://carriegreenecoaching.com/

New Minnesota Zoo exhibit swarms with Big Bugs!

It's going to be buggy this summer at the Minnesota Zoo -- very, very buggy.

The Apple Valley zoo opens its Big Bugs! exhibit Saturday with 13 giant animatronic insects on display along the Northern Trail. The exhibition runs through Labor Day and is included with zoo admission.

The robots were created by Billings Productions, which brought animatronic dinosaurs to the zoo last year. While they are a spectacle, there's an education purpose to the exhibit, too.

Insects are typically an unnoticed and often unwanted part of peoples' lives, and the exhibit tries to open a window into their fascinating world, said Jessica Madole, interpretive program developer.

"We want to highlight the fact that bugs are all around us," Madole said.

Black ants, bombadier beetles, giant devil's flower mantis, orb-weaver spiders, giraffe stag beetle and a jungle nymph walking stick at the Minnesota Zoo.
"When they're this big, you can't ignore them."

Insects pollinate much of our food, break down dead plants and animals and help control the populations of other insects.

"Your breakfast plate would look one-third empty without pollinators," said Erik Runquist, butterfly conservation biologist. The exhibit includes information on how residents can "plant for pollinators" by limiting pesticide use and installing native plants in their landscapes.

The sheer size of the animatronic creatures makes it easier to learn about them as they flap their wings, close their pincers or slurp imaginary nectar. Visitors can even control the movements of a stag beetle and watch a bombardier beetle shoot gas from its backside, although it's technically referred to as the "lower abdomen."

There also are live insects on display both behind glass and in the hands of zoo workers and volunteers. Most of the live bugs are big, too; many come from the warm, wet climate of the South Pacific.

Jamie Ries, bird supervisor, said early visitors to the Big Bugs! exhibit were excited to interact with both the animatronic and real insects.

"It put all the work into perspective," Ries said. "It was the icing on the cake."

Besides their ecological value, Cale Nordmeyer, butterfly conservation specialist, hopes visitors will appreciate insects for their intrinsic value.

"They're beautiful," Nordmeyer said while holding a jungle nymph, a green stick insect about 10 inches long. "That's the whole purpose of this exhibit, to get people to think about bugs."

Christopher Magan can be reached at 651-228-5557. Follow him at twitter.com/chris_magan.

IF YOU GO

The Big Bugs! exhibit opens Saturday and runs through Labor Day. Zoo admission is $18 for adults and $12 for children and seniors. Parking is $7.


Source: http://www.twincities.com

Stunning view of the Americas on Earth Day

Today, April 22, 2014 is Earth Day, and what better way to celebrate than taking a look at our home planet from space.

NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured this stunning view of the Americas on Earth Day, April 22, 2014 at 11:45 UTC/7:45 a.m. EDT. The data from GOES-East was made into an image by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

In North America, clouds associated with a cold front stretch from Montreal, Canada, south through the Tennessee Valley, and southwest to southern Texas bringing rain east of the front today. A low pressure area in the Pacific Northwest is expected to bring rainfall in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, stretching into the upper Midwest, according to NOAA's National Weather Service. That low is also expected to bring precipitation north into the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. Another Pacific low is moving over southern Nevada and the National Weather Service expects rain from that system to fall in central California, Nevada, and northern Utah.

Near the equator, GOES imagery shows a line of pop up thunderstorms. Those thunderstorms are associated with the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). The ITCZ encircles the Earth near the equator.

In South America, convective (rapidly rising air that condenses and forms clouds) thunderstorms pepper Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and northwestern and southeastern Brazil.

GOES satellites provide the kind of continuous monitoring necessary for intensive data analysis. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth. This allows GOES to hover continuously over one position on Earth's surface, appearing stationary. As a result, GOES provide a constant vigil for the atmospheric "triggers" for severe weather conditions such as tornadoes, flash floods, hail storms and hurricanes.

When Strategies Are Not Strategic

Modern business planning owes it origins to two very different parents.

The first is the obligation to prepare a "Prospectus" when floating a company, outlining the "prospects" of the new venture. Although an early prospectus has little in common with a modern business plan, it might well have contained elements that might find their way into such a plan - a statement of purpose, a "vision" of where the new company intends to be in a few years, an analysis of opportunities and threats, and so on.

A prospectus is primarily a legal and financial document, but it is also a marketing tool to sell the new company to investors. What it is not is a strategy.

The second major influence on business planning is military planning. Many of the early pioneers of business planning were professional soldiers or naval officers who were retired or who found themselves surplus to requirements between wars. They brought the techniques they had learned in the services into the world of commerce.

There is a saying to the effect that "When amateurs talk about war, they talk about strategy; when professionals talk about war, they talk about logistics."

There is much truth in that. The key to winning wars is less actual fighting than being able to move men and material at short notice and under pressure to the place where they are most needed. The army that does this most effectively will usually win the fighting.

Since professional soldiers devote a great deal of their time and thought to this, they tend to get good at it. Experience has taught them a few simple techniques that are usually very effective in practice. Although there are many famous logistical failures, they are famous because they are exceptional. This is the military efficiency that proved so useful in the private sector.

However, the downside of professional soldiers being good at logistics because they talk about the subject more than strategy is that they are not so good at strategy.

Career soldiers are not necessarily expert strategists. The skills that make them good at logistical detail rarely come with a view of the bigger picture. Experienced commanders have often made elementary strategic errors that even a well-informed amateur would have foreseen and avoided. Whatever one's view of the policies of the West in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one can deny that the implementation of those policies has been full of avoidable strategic errors.

Many of the fine military minds that influenced the development of business planning were characterised by the same combination of logistical skill and strategic blindness.

Here then is the great gap between the two sources of business planning: neither was particularly interested in actual strategy.

Those who could draft a good prospectus might be able to conjure up an enticing picture of how things could be, and those in the military tradition could deal with the nuts and bolts of running a business, but the problem of turning the pretty picture into the nuts and bolts was never addressed.

There were plans and plans but no real strategy.

This original problem has never quite been resolved. One sees it reflected in too many business plans today. They are big on the broad vision and sound on the operational details, but have no strategy to turn one into the other - which, one would have thought, was the whole point of a business plan in the first place!

Long Term Strategy Growth For Your Business

The opportunities that are available to you when you are starting an online business are almost endless. You need to consider all of the factors that go into opening an online business before you do so, however, as that will give you a better opportunity of being successful. What are some of those options that need to be considered and how can you give yourself the running start that is necessary to make a success of your business and to continue to do so for the long term?

One of the first things that you are going to need to do is to make a determination that you will treat your business properly. If you are simply going to treat the business as you would a hobby, it is unlikely that you are going to give it the attention that it needs. Many online businesses tend to fail because they are not given the proper attention, especially when you expect the business to run itself from the start. There may be a time when you can walk away from the business to a certain extent but that is not going to happen until it is established and running properly.

You also need to consider the type of products that you are going to offer to your customers. One popular option is to sell electronic products, such as e-books or software. If you're going to do this, try to narrow the niche of your product to the tightest extent possible. That will help you to reach a very specific audience that will be more interested in what you have to offer. It is also important for you to verify in advance that somebody is looking for what you are selling. That is another problem that many online businesses experience, selling in a market that is not buying.

If you are going to be selling physical items, you should consider everything that is involved. After all, many small businesses do not have the funds that are necessary to stock the items so that they can continually ship them to customers. That is why you should look for dropship suppliers that will house the items for you and ship them once the orders start rolling in. If you find wholesale dropshippers, that would be ideal because they will give you the price that you need along with taking care of your customers through the shipping process.

One other thing that you should consider is the way that you are going to be selling the product or service online. Some people are going to want to start a website or may even sell it through social media and email marketing. Another option that is open to you is to sell your product through an online auction website, such as eBay. Although it does make a difference where you are going to be selling the product, it makes more of a difference that you are consistent in your efforts. Once you decide which way you are going to go, continue to push forward in that direction and you will find it much easier to be successful.

Source: https://www.doba.com/

Tourism At Apostle Islands Brings In $24M, Creates Over 300 Jobs

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A new report shows just how much national parks benefit the local economy.

The National Park Service report from 2012 showed that the 163,419 people that visited the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Bayfiled, Wis. spent a collective $24 million during their visits.

Additionally, 330 jobs were created in surrounding communities.

This was all before the ice caves on Lake Superior were accessible.

“This new report shows that national park tourism is a significant driver in the national economy, returning $10 for every $1 invested, and funding generated by national parks has a swift and direct positive impact on local economies,” park superintendent Bob Krumenaker said.

According to the report, visitors spend the most in restaurants, grocery and convenience stores at 39 percent. Lodging and other recreation follow close behind at 27 and 20 percent respectively.

Already this year, more than 60,000 people have visited the caves.

Source: http://minnesota.cbslocal.com