Contact: Jon Henkes, President & CEO, WisconsinEye
608-316-6850
jon.henkes@wiseye.org
wiseye.org
New WisconsinEye Business Series Pairs Wisconsin CEOs for
Behind-the-Scenes Company Tours and Candid Conversation
– MADISON, WI – Trade Secrets, WisconsinEye’s new business series will begin airing on Charter 995 and Time Warner 363 at 10am on Sunday, April 6. The program will repeat throughout the month:
Mondays at 7pm
Fridays at 8pm
Sundays at 10am
And on-demand at wiseye.org
The pilot is a portrait of Peter Harken, founder and chairman of Harken, Inc., the premier manufacturer of yacht and sailboat equipment located in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. The May episode features Peter Harken travelling to Germantown to visit with Katherine Gehl, CEO of Gehl Foods, the nation’s largest low-acid, aseptic dairy facility which turns real dairy ingredients into the top-quality, shelf stable products.
Trade Secrets sponsors include Ruder Ware Law Firm and Judd S. Alexander Foundation, both of Wausau, Wisconsin. “We’re honored to present the Trade Secrets series on WisconsinEye,” says Stew Etten, president of Ruder Ware, “It’s a new show that shares candid conversations between successful Wisconsin business leaders, and lets you, the audience, “in” on what it takes to cultivate both business and community in our great state.”
WisconsinEye is a statewide, non-partisan, non-profit, independent television channel devoted to covering state government and civic activities throughout Wisconsin. We cover all state Senate and Assembly floor sessions and many of the legislative committees, plus the Wisconsin Supreme Court. We also cover “civic activities” throughout the state to include conventions, panel discussions, presentations, forums, etc.
Our funding comes from a statewide community of donors, not from taxpayers.
WisconsinEye programs – with no commercial interruption – can be seen on Charter 995 and Time Warner 363, as well as live webstreams at wiseye.org. We also provide our complete archive of past programs on-demand at wiseye.org.
CLIPS from the pilot, Trade Secrets (TRT 2:17)
Titles:
Peter Harken – founder and chairman of Harken, Inc.
Dan Weinfurter – series host, serial entrepreneur and author
CLIP #1: Peter Harken – “If it’s really easy then there’s something wrong. I don’t think there is any easy path to glory or whatever. I kinda call life is like climbing up a mountain or a hill and it’s full of cowpies all the way up and what you try and do is dance through the cowpies without stepping into them. But once in a while you do, then you just shake off your boots and keep climbing. If you ever go through a recession and your main business, if you just concentrate on one area and that goes into the tank like the way we got hit. The minute a thing like a recession hits and people are now penny-pinching to basically live, the first thing they stop is buying this kind of stuff that we were making. Within three days of the crash in 2008, I think we lost almost 60% of our business. Orders were being cancelled so fast you couldn’t believe it. We were just staggering, you know…what to do.” (1:14)
CLIP #2: Peter Harken – “Do not let a mechanical voice answer the phone. I don’t care if I become a billion dollar company with 100,000 people around the world, whenever someone calls into the company there will be a human voice there saying, ‘How can I help you?’ Just learning right from wrong, that’s what we do here. We make decisions right from wrong.” (:33)
