The Fargo Five with Conrad Fargo

What does it take to build a bar from a vacation daydream into a ten-year Fargo institution? Aaron Templin, proprietor of Front Street Tap Room and Cellar Comedy Club at 614 Main Avenue, sits down with Conrad Fargo to unpack exactly that. Aaron's path runs from an accounting degree at Concordia College to managing 60 part-time employees at the Scheels Arena by his mid-twenties, before quitting...

Conrad Fargo sits down with Dr. Edison Arouse, owner of Edison Chiropractic in downtown Fargo, to unpack a remarkable life journey that spans continents, conflict, and calling. Located at 624 Main Avenue near Rhombus Pizza, Salon Duo, and Seller 624, Edison Chiropractic blends chiropractic care, acupuncture, and elements of traditional herbal medicine into a personalized healing experience. Dr. Ar...

The episode opens with Conrad and David unpacking the difference between empathy and sympathy, a discussion that sets up everything that follows. David is a fourth generation veteran who deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 and later served in Washington DC. He came home carrying PTSD that took years to surface, while his then wife was recovering from a concussion that ended her medical school career....

Conrad sits down with Zach Landry, owner of The Wellness Way Fargo, to unpack a very different approach to chiropractic care and whole-body health. Instead of quick adjustments and short visits, Zach and his team spend the majority of their time analyzing lab work, reviewing blood panels, and helping patients understand the deeper “why” behind chronic symptoms. From hormone testing and food sensit...

Conrad Fargo sits down with Holger Loor, owner of Ultra Cleaning Services, for a conversation that goes far beyond mops, crews, and commercial accounts. Holger shares what it took to leave Ecuador, adapt to life in Fargo, learn English, survive the weather, and build a company while raising a family and leading a multilingual team. What starts as a story about cleaning quickly opens into something...

In this episode of The Fargo Five, Conrad Fargo sits down with Tara Kohn, a Fargo-based holistic health coach and foot reflexologist, to explore how mindset, gratitude, and nutrition can radically alter a person’s life trajectory. From a 26-year career in massage therapy to building a self-employed coaching business, Tara shares how her lifelong experience with chronic pain shaped her perspective...

Aaron Dorval joins The Fargo Five to unpack a career that spans from a 17-year-old call center agent in Dickinson, North Dakota to a global business analyst consulting for companies around the world through Humana. What starts as a conversation about honesty and transparency quickly turns into a deep exploration of how systems thinking, curiosity, and problem-solving can reshape entire organizatio...

Arthur Weidner, owner of Crude Spirits, joins The Fargo Five to unpack a journey that blends old-world tradition with modern engineering precision. From a 100-year-old family recipe born in the smokehouses of western North Dakota to a multi-state liquor brand, Arthur shares how North Dakota Sweet Crude and Sweet Crude Orange came to life and what makes them fundamentally different from typical liq...

In this episode of The Fargo Five, Conrad sits down with Dr. Erika Wiger, owner of Turning Point Chiropractic in Fargo, North Dakota, to explore the deeper meaning of family, belonging, and what it really takes to build a life and business aligned with your values. After spending over a decade in California, Erika made the deliberate decision to return home to the Fargo-Moorhead area, trading suns...

Ashley Bates, founder of Blame Bates, joins Conrad Fargo for one of the most personal and revealing episodes of The Fargo Five. Based in Fargo, North Dakota, Blame Bates is a 501c3 nonprofit helping adults 18+ navigate mental health challenges, substance use, homelessness, and reentry after incarceration. Through care coordination and peer support, Ashley and her team meet clients weekly, break do...

Conrad Fargo sits down with Zach Petty, founder and CEO of Legato Networks, a startup platform built to connect local musicians for jam sessions, collaborations, bands, and creative partnerships. The conversation explores how modern social media has become overwhelming, addictive, and fragmented, and how Legato Networks is attempting to strip the experience back to something simple and useful: hel...

Kristen Hanson, owner of Crowning Touch Cleaning, breaks down what it actually looks like to build a “real” cleaning company that grows beyond one person with a mop and bucket. She explains how the business started through word of mouth, how demand grew into a waiting list, and why the leap to hiring changes everything. Kristen walks through how they find and vet team members, including using Inde...

Conrad Fargo sits down with Sue Baron, founder of Golden Drive, a volunteer-run nonprofit supporting homeless children in the Fargo–Moorhead metro. Sue breaks down Golden Drive’s model in plain language: no salaries, no big building, no holding product “just because,” and no complicated gatekeeping. Donations come in and go right back out through schools, shelters, and resource rooms, helping kids...

Conrad Fargo sits down with Shelle Hagen, owner of Elite Massage Academy, to unpack how one local massage business became three interconnected ventures: Elite Therapeutic Massage (with offices in Fargo and Moorhead), Elite Massage Academy (a massage therapy school), and a continuing education operation that has her traveling the United States teaching therapists and spa teams. The conversation sta...

Heather Aal runs Aal Yours Consignment, a consignment boutique and curiosity shop tucked into the Hawthorne Historic District in South Fargo at 615 9th Avenue South, about a block and a half south of Island Park. The space has its own local lore, originally an Island Park grocery store, and now a rotating, highly curated mix of antique and vintage furniture and home decor, with new items hitting t...

Conrad sits down with Matt Larson, the Executive Director of Farm in the Dell of the Red River Valley, a nonprofit with a simple mission: transforming disabilities into abilities. Matt explains how the farm and garden operation employs adults with disabilities, creating community, vocation, purpose, and a paycheck, while also growing produce that serves the Fargo-Moorhead area. The work is seasona...

Veronica Malachowski joins Conrad Fargo to unpack the philosophy behind True Image Tallow Skincare; a Fargo-area skincare brand built around locally sourced bison tallow and a “keep it simple” ingredient mindset. Veronica walks through what tallow actually is, why leaf fat (kidney suet) matters for skincare, and how she dry-renders bison suet at low temperature to avoid water-related spoilage and...

Rusty Galloway breaks down how a Class 4 laser-cleaning rig turns nasty jobs into clean, finished projects. Rusty describes their portable 300-watt Class 4 pulse laser setup (suitcase-sized unit, long hose, handheld head, and an air compressor) and how it strips away grease, carbon buildup, dirt, grime, rust, paint, and varnish without chemical baths and with minimal cleanup. They also get real ab...

Conrad Fargo sits down with Jon Tatro owner of Clean and Pristine Solutions LLC, a local residential cleaning company focused on recurring weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly home cleanings. Jon explains why he prefers the more personal, relationship-based nature of residential work, while also taking on daytime office cleaning when it fits and occasional move-out style jobs through the Farg...

Danny begins with a simple line from his former personal trainer — life never gets easier, you just get better at dealing with it — and shows how that mindset carried him from bodybuilding diets and long days at Valley Landscaping into launching his own company from nothing but determination, word of mouth, and a garage full of refurbished equipment. He explains how he and his brother scavenged mo...

Sheridan Averson, owner of Green Prairie Counseling, joins the show to unpack what unconditional positive regard really looks like in practice and why a therapist’s job often begins by simply accepting everything a client brings into the room. Sheridan discusses the fine line between encouragement, acceptance, and manipulation, and how intention determines whether guidance becomes helpful or harmf...

In this episode, Conrad Fargo sits down with Mark Bjornstad, President and Co-Founder of Drekker Brewing Company, the powerhouse behind Brewhalla, Fargo’s iconic “food and entertainment wonderland.” Mark reflects on his transition from a career in anesthesia to building one of Minnesota’s most successful breweries — a brand now distributing to 34 states and across Europe, Asia, and Scandinavia. Th...

When military precision meets heartfelt empathy, transformation follows. On this episode of The Fargo Five, host Conrad Fargo sits down with Brittany Schank, owner of Solace Counseling in Fargo and a 19-year veteran of the Air National Guard. Brittany shares her journey from catching shoplifters at Sears to creating a 12-therapist mental health practice behind the old Chuck E. Cheese on 13th Avenu...

Nikki joins The Fargo Five from her rural life in Barney, North Dakota, where she and her family manage about 30 head of cattle (and two ducks), while her husband works full-time as a diesel mechanic. Nikki explains that she practices Reiki with animals only and conducts roughly 95% of her sessions remotely—usually by phone—with clients spanning Florida, Oklahoma, the East Coast, Minnesota, North...

On this episode, Collin Andrew Koslofsky traces the arc from inheriting his late mother’s mountain of canvases and paint to launching “Entropy in Bloom,” a one-night solo art gala and bazaar at the 4 and 4 above Side Street Grill & Pub in downtown Fargo (Fourth Street & Fourth Avenue), across from the Civic Center and the nearby harm reduction center. Collin sold his third-ever painting —...