- [Narrator] Production funding for Making It Up North is provided by the citizens of Minnesota through the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

- I would've never thought in Northern Minnesota, that hot sauce would have been that big.

- Lou's Fish House, this is Ashleigh how can I help you out?

Starting off opening a business, you don't really know what needs to be done until you're in the middle of the fire and you're trying to open.

(bright country music) - Started out as a joke, now it's my career.

(upbeat music) - Yeah, if you can't handle the heat stay out of this kitchen.

(man laughs) These are ghost peppers.

Here we're gonna make our patient eat hot sauce.

We have to start with a lot of ingredients that are on foods that people already like, amplify them a little bit and add a little bit of a kick to it.

The majority of my training is from experience.

And I've learned you know, how not to cut your fingers open.

You know.

So me being a startup businesses at first, that initial startup costs is... that's some big money, yeah.

Keep that low and start selling first.

Yeah, we'll get a few more of these ones done and then you'll yeah, you'll see that thing in action.

It's, you'll see why we invested in it.

It's awesome.

So this has a little half-inch blade right there and it just keeps coming off.

This goes and spits them right out.

Perfect half-inch cuts every single time.

And this, it's a bit of an investment but again the time that you save in the kitchen, that's the goal.

Save your time.

Here we go.

Here it comes.

So you can see why we start with the super hots and put those down at the bottom so you don't have to smell 'em for the next hour.

(man laughs) This kitchen has made a monumental difference in my production.

It's, I've worked through a few different kitchens before I moved back to my hometown here.

And this kitchen is something else.

- It's kind of a well kept secret.

Hopefully not for very much longer.

- You know, the Rich's you know, Tom and Jesse they've welcomed me with open arms.

It literally feels like I've come home.

And it's been much easier for me to operate and do what I do.

Checking that pH, checking that temperature.

Nobody would have thought that a hot sauce would have come out of Floodwood, but yup, sure enough right off of the main street.

Well I went to high school in Floodwood.

I was adopted at 18 months, out of Port au Prince, Haiti, I adopt through Duluth area.

Because of different things that went on in life I was then put in foster care at about 10 years old.

I was very fortunate to have ended up in a foster home up here.

My foster father, Tim Miles, He's a former All American.

In college, played in the NFL played at the Cleveland Browns.

And, you know, he has two sons of his own.

And I happen to be lucky and be a part of their family now.

And they've always been a huge support system for me, the whole town has been.

Right from the first moment I walked in.

"Hey, how you doing, what's your name?"

"I'm Al" "where are you from?"

"Duluth."

"Cool, welcome to Floodwood."

And that's the way it's been always - It's a pretty cool thing.

He's a local boy and he's starting a business in Floodwood.

How can you not like that?

So yeah, we're very excited for him.

Very excited that he accepted our offer to come and come cook here.

(crowd cheering) - Yeah, I've played football, played basketball and did track and field.

I went to the boxing gym, and that was a totally different experience.

They spar and they fight and they punch each other in the face.

They punch each other in the body and they laugh they joke, I'm like... Well, that's different.

So I got into it myself and I landed my first big punch on like that guy in the gym.

I was like... Yeah, I can do this.

This guy he'd been boxing, 15 years and I laded a crispy clean punch on him.

Granted that I had my eyes closed and I swung like... (man laughs hysterically) But it landed.

I didn't even have my eyes open and now I can rebalance and there's all these little intricacies that go into the sport that really got my interest.

And that's where it started.

I saw that little bit of success that little bit of a spark like, it can be real.

So I just gave it all I had.

Won the Golden Gloves came back from Little Rock, Arkansas.

I lost to number three in the country came back turned pro.

Yeah, won a national title.

My profile on the state title, my sixth or seventh profile, won a national title, seventh or eighth.

Once I got to somewhere around eight or nine fights, I started coaching.

And I wanted to bring others up behind me, because in my life experience I know what it's like to not have that support.

When I'm training for fights and I'm cutting weight I can't eat that much.

But if I'm gonna eat I want it to taste good.

This is something that I've happened to do in my spare time.

I'm also a corrections officer as well.

I'm a professional boxer.

I'm a youth mentor.

I'm a fitness coach.

I can tell you let life keep moving forward.

It's been really cool to see how everything's grown and how people have accepted it and really jumped on it right from the gate.

I didn't have the labels made and I was still selling out.

Yeah, we recently have Mond du Lac they bought three boxes.

They're gonna have it on every table up there.

- Well, we use it in a few few things.

We use it of course at our Bloody Mary bar cause everybody is looking for the next neat, additive to the Bloody Mary.

But it's a main ingredient in our buttermilk chicken sandwich.

Both used in the glaze, and then in the breading coating that we put on it.

And that's what gives it that unique, kind of hot and then sweet flavor.

- [Man] Thank you.

- [Man] Welcome.

- [Al] I look forward to being in more restaurants, being in grocery stores and things like that.

And I would love to take the place of Frank's on every restaurant table in the upper Minnesota area if not the country.

- When we decided to do this originally him and I had probably a two hour conversation at a table at my house about ideas back and forth about how to market it.

How can you you know, put it into like a different container.

Can I get it in bulk for the, for a kitchen operation so that we can use it just for a cost benefit.

- There's a lot of things in business not many people are willing to share, but it's just having the conversation.

I mean, I guess, with my previous career of being a professional boxer and doing all of that, I've already built my LLC around all of that.

So I understand the basics, but about food production that's a whole different animal.

I just ask them different questions about different things and they, yeah well, that's what you have to do you have to get a hold of them.

And I guess a lot of people never would have thought, you know, like hot sauce is actually fermented, like yeah, it's quite wild.

There we go, real down there baby.

You get into the manufacturing of the whole thing and it's you know, now you don't have to be there at every point of sale, things like that.

And seeing that little shift slowly happening for myself is finally, finally cause there's much that is done.

Well, if you want to come up with another product is boop boop boop you've already done all the other steps.

But it's those little incremental steps early in your production.

You need to get those done.

Otherwise, you're gonna be climbing that hill, the entire experience and most people run from it.

But through boxing I've learnt like go towards the danger.

You're either gonna win or you're gonna learn.

(upbeat music) - How are you doing today?

- Good thank you.

(upbeat music) - When I was 15 years old, I always wanted to own my own business.

And you know, just slowly got involved with DECA which is a business club for high school students.

In 2018, my mom was in a purchase agreement for Lou's Fish House.

Originally, she wanted to open up a seven room in right off the side here.

And we were just gonna rent out the retail space that I'm standing in right now to someone else.

And then, I was like "Hey, mom, dad, let's open an ice cream shop."

We looked at the feasibility of the business what we could do with it.

Ice cream wasn't the only thing that we were gonna focus on.

So we're like okay, "well what can we do?

We have the neon signs of Lou's Fish House we have all the equipment.

Let's smoke fish."

Lou's Fish House, this is Ashleigh.

How can I help you out?

- I'm 16 years old.

My name is Caleb Waldson, and I am the smokehouse manager at Lou's Fish House.

- My team is awesome.

Everyone here is younger than me so 18 and under all the way down to 14.

And they are the greatest group of kids that I have ever worked with.

From the time we're like okay, we're actually gonna open to the time we opened was roughly three months or so.

So we didn't go through the traditional process of we have this business plan that we've been working on for a year, it was more so thrown together.

I think I contributed some to it, but for the most part I think it was my mom who wrote it.

Starting off opening a business, you don't really know what needs to be done until you're in the middle of a fire and you're trying to open.

So my dad, my mom helped me out tremendously with all the work that needed to be completed from renovations to creating a functional business.

I also, my DECA advisors has really helped out with just the support factor of "you got this, you can do this, I believe in you."

And a lot of the community reached out as well.

And they were like, "we're behind you, you can open a business even though you're only 16, and don't have your driver's license yet."

So... You know, looking back I didn't live like an abnormal teenager lifestyle but I definitely took different paths.

I figured out after running loose for a couple of years, you realize what you like to do and what you don't like to do.

I really enjoy working with people such as our customers our employees, having a healthy relationship there.

As a young female, working at a business, a lot of people don't necessarily believe that what I'm doing is actually me.

They think I'm just kind of the front of the business and that all the hard work is coming from someone else.

I actually run this business.

And this is actually my team and we work together to accomplish a greater mission.

Later on today, I will be going through all of our accounts, making sure we have fish ordered and smoked, making sure my employees are scheduled to work and generally managing the facility.

- Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- As a manager, she's more coaching than manager.

I've never gone through a meeting or anything saying wow, you know, that was very mean or manager like.

She's more building.

And so that's what makes me wanna be an entrepreneur is that she's coaching me to be better.

She teach me how to be better.

You know, everybody makes mistakes every day.

And that's what she always preaches is it's just, it's okay if you make a mistake, you just can't make them twice.

And I totally respect that and that's what I'd like to be as a boss.

- I think making it is taking every day one step at a time and saying how can I improve this business for long term success.

- It's awesome being a part of it when it was just a little little business and now we're growing and growing.

And now we get relationships with people and it's awesome.

- It's a lot of hard work.

And eventually you look back, you know, whether it be a month down the road or a year down the road and you go, wow, we did that.

(upbeat music) (bright music) ♪ Lazy Daisy is standing in a field.

♪ ♪ No one knows the potential that she yield.

♪ ♪ You sway all day relaxing in the pleasant breeze.

♪ ♪ My work load has brought me to my knees.

♪ - True story, no offense to guitar players but I was at a restaurant with my granddad and we were talking I said I'm in band, I play the trombone and I'm in choir and I sing all right.

But I wanna be able to compete myself.

Trombones up to your lips.

Everyone was like, "play the guitar."

My family was like, "get a guitar."

And I said no I'm a unicorn.

I would never, everybody plays a guitar.

Everybody and their mother plays a guitar.

So my granddad said, "I got an accordion in my wardrobe.

Why don't you take it for a week and if you like it, go buy one.

If you hate it, then don't waste your money."

Within 24 hours I was practicing in a parking lot, I can't remember who it was.

But they came up to me and said, "Hey, I got a family reunion in Hoyt Lakes tomorrow do you wanna play there?"

I made a joke.

"I ain't cheap how much we talking?"

I didn't even know how to play it.

I knew how to play one four chords and I got an accordion.

I just came up within five minutes and had my first paid gig within 24 hours of playing an accordion.

Within a week I went back to my granddad and I was playing Beer Barrel Polka and he says, "gosh you made more progress in a week than I have since the friggin 80s.

Just keep it I'm never gonna play it again."

♪ Seeing smiling faces without new under gotten things ♪ ♪ and walk and talk and finally notice ♪ ♪ the happiness life brings.

♪ - You have to smile when Steve's around.

He's just always been a breath of fresh air.

We just decided to have something silly fun and laugh.

There's not enough of that right now.

- I do love performing.

It's by far the most entertaining and rewarding thing for me personally.

And you get to meet so many other people.

But, yeah, I don't want to be just a tool that people use to smile.

I wanna be you know, a tool people used to smile and something that can help you think a little deeper.

Hello, everybody.

Thanks for the view.

I'm Steve Solkela.

- And I'm Breklin Pollas.

- And welcome to episode three of Tandem Bike Talks.

Today, we got an epic epic video planned for you.

Talking about going back to school.

Believe it or not I had this idea back in college.

I had a friend in my junior year, she took her own life.

I was distraught, I had a real hard time getting over it.

I bought a tandem bike.

And I said I wanna make it my goal to somehow combat the suicide rate on my campus and maybe my world if I can get stuff online by picking people up on a tandem bike.

So I wrote a song called Pick'em Up, which is about not only physically picking someone up on a tandem bike, but picking up someone emotionally too.

So the Tandem Bike Talks is an idea I had two years ago.

And I'm finally making it a reality cause I'm a procrastinator with tech problems.

But it's going to be good.

And I expect to have some comedic episodes but a lot of insightful thought provoking stuff as well.

- I know that anytime I ever hang out with Steve, it's a fun day.

- So Breklin, what do you think of this all back to school thing.

- Well, I am glad that we are going back to school, but also I am nervous about it.

I trust him with a lot of things.

I mean, I probably tell him more things than I tell my best girlfriend.

So, yeah.

(lively music) - The Northern Lights Music Festival has been a part of my life since 2013 I believe.

I had a part time job building the set and painting it for the opera company.

And I don't know exactly how it happened but I'm pretty sure Veda heard me talking to somebody while I was at work.

- I'm Veda Zuponcic.

Originally from Aurora and I'm the artistic director of the Northern Lights Music Festival.

- She said, "you got a low voice.

How old are you?"

"Like 13 14."

She's like, "how would you like to be in the opera?"

I had never studied Italian.

I had never even like sang with sheep music before.

I ended up with a small little 20 seconds solo in the opera Pagliacci Leoncavallo, an Italian opera.

I was only a ninth grader.

And flash forward I was going into the Marines.

Veda just kind of said no.

She said you're going to music college and I was like well, I'll give it a, I'll humor you.

I ended up applying to Rowan and she bought me a plane ticket cause she believed in me that much.

I owe her so much for my success in my life.

And I love her.

I really do.

(piano playing) You know, fun fact, I am a substitute teacher.

I got my paperwork done finally.

I just taught for like five days before COVID struck.

You know I milk what I can financially.

Started, you know, shingling a little rough to make ends meet and landscaping and I lost all seven of my piano students and my one accordion student.

And had over 60 paid gigs canceled.

It's definitely you gotta feel it.

You gotta be sad.

It took a lot out of my confidence in my life for a while, March, April, May were the hardest.

But then by June I was like you wanna know something I'm done with it.

I'm a happy guy.

I started getting driving gigs and barbecue type social distance gigs.

And if you wanna survive this do it.

You have no idea how good it feels to have a live gig again.

I don't like to call myself a victim.

My life is good.

There's a lot of privileges that I've been given just because of my hair color and my accordion skills and my bass#*#* voice and the skin color and stuff too.

But I am a big advocate for no matter what cards you dealt with, it's up to you to keep to play and keep to grow and build and even though I'm a child abuse victim and I grew up in you know, relative poverty and my mom got remarried and things were better and I got bullied and all this and all that and was malnourished and kicked around a lot growing up and was you know...

I don't talk about that.

In fact, I'm kind of shocked that I even brought it Up in the interview but this is getting real.

But, yeah, I don't need a life jacket I can swim.

(bright country music) I wanna get famous and I never really knew why but now I do.

I wanna get famous not because I want the wealth and the cars and the ladies.

Cause quite honestly, I'm not really made happy by those things.

I'm happy no matter what.

I was happy in a trailer park.

I was happy covered in mud.

I wanna get famous so that I have a bigger chance for an impact on the world.

My goal is to make the world a better place.

It's been that way since I was a little kid.

Yeah, I will be famous.

I will be famous for the right reasons.

♪ On my way.

♪ ♪ I'll be there today.

♪ ♪ Just give me a plane ticket to North Minnesota ♪ ♪ Yeah it's gonna be okay.

♪ (instrumental music) ♪ I know you are my home ♪ ♪ When life has me all so eerie.

♪ ♪ That's where I'm going.

♪ ♪ This place was heaven sent.

♪ ♪ And it's where I spent ♪ ♪ The best days of my life.

♪ ♪ Yeah, know that I'm from Palo Minnesota ♪ ♪ The place where I'm free ♪ ♪ From all of my stress ♪