From truck driver to multimillionaire entrepreneur, Arnie Johnson combined his considerable street smarts with a Carlson School program to flourish.

Arnie Johnson’s buddies liked to tell him that he was a dreamer, but the truth was that he didn’t seem much different from any of the other truck drivers wheeling around the Iron Range with their loads of ore. He had only a high school diploma to his name, and even he admits that his record was undistinguished at best.

It would have been easy for him to keep punching the clock at that job, earning a steady paycheck that could have supported his wife and two daughters. But in 1965, when a friend offered him a part-time job selling retirement plans for an insurance company, he figured it was worth the risk.

He took the two weeks’ vacation he’d accumulated and told himself that if he could make enough money on the commission-only gig during that time, he’d quit his job and sell full time. He didn’t make a single sale, but he gained the confidence he needed to take the job anyway. After all, he reasoned, the worst thing that could happen if he failed at the job would be that he’d have to return to the iron mines. “I didn’t want to stay in the mines forever,” he says. “When I got the chance, I was excited because I knew it was a chance for a better life for my family.”

The sales were slow to start, but then started to grow. He never looked back. After 10 increasingly successful years he decided to found his own company, Universal Pensions Inc., out of Baxter, Minnesota. The company offered retirement consulting, services, and forms to the financial services community. Starting off with just one other employee along with a part-time secretary, Johnson’s fledgling company represented just over a dozen banks in central Minnesota. He estimates that revenues were less than $24,000 his first year in the business.

A turning point

As the company grew, Johnson realized that the school of hard knocks couldn’t prepare him for every twist and turn in his business. With that in mind, he enrolled in the Carlson School’s Minnesota Executive Program in 1988. Working side-by-side with executives from prestigious companies including Cargill and Nash Finch, he gained great insight—and great friends. On the last day of class, he asked two of his classmates to join his board. Both accepted. “I met so many different people during the six or seven months of the program,” Johnson says. “I benefited greatly from the networking.”

A quarter century after starting Universal Pensions, the company had grown to some 500 employees representing about 8,000 banks, as well as the largest brokerage, mutual fund, and insurance companies in the nation. Johnson sold the company in 2001 for $85 million. He owns Johnson Enterprises, LLC. and is involved in other ventures. He serves on the boards of the Brainerd Community College and the Bremer Bank, and the Minnesota Initiative Foundation Board of Trustees, as well as several other profit and nonprofit organizations. He was a founding member of the Brainerd Lakes Area Development Corporation, a community-driven nonprofit organization designed to help new and expanding businesses find the resources they need to succeed in the Brainerd Lakes Area.

These days, Johnson keeps busy as the controlling shareholder of Minnesota Thermal Science, which makes containers that can keep blood cool and help medics treat injured soldiers while they’re still on the battlefield.

Although his goals for himself and for his company have constantly evolved throughout his life, he is still fired by the same spirit that he had more than 40 years ago hauling ore. “I just want to keep moving forward,” he says.