2006 Minnesota Business Hall of Fame

That same year, both Blashack’s brother and husband died. In those dark times, she devoted her energies to raising her son and to the growth of her company, and was rewarded with a 7,600 percent increase in revenues between 1999 and 2003, inclusion on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies three years in a row, and winning the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Minnesota and Dakotas region in 2000.

Blashack credits her father, a farmer, for her drive, and her mother for her ability to successfully execute plans. “Dad was typically before his time,” she says. “He was an ideas man. He was involved with ethanol 20 years ago. My mom strove for excellence in everything she did. She also gave me my philosophical perspective.”

Her father died last November. Weakened by cancer, he made a special trip to the national conference of the company’s consultants in the Twin Cities last year to watch his daughter speak. “I introduced him, but he couldn’t come up on stage because he was in a wheelchair,” Blashack says. “Everybody gave him a standing ovation.”

For Blashack, the standing ovation illustrated something about the character of her company: the way her own story and success inspire others and connect them to the business. Consultants love the story of how she started Tastefully Simple in a small shed, Blashack says; now the company operates out of a new 178,000-square-foot facility that overlooks woods and wetlands.

“It’s having a dream and going for it. People relate to it. It’s hope,” she adds. “This business is so much about relationships.”