Growing up on a small family farm in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, and barely graduating from high school, Burt Nordstrand ultimately became a successful entrepreneur credited with bringing self-service gas stations to the Midwest.  Founded in 1971, Nordstrand’s SSG (Self-Service Gas) Corporation grew to include more than 40 stores before he sold his company in 2016 to Cross America, one of the largest, independent retailers of motor fuels and convenience merchandise in North America. Nordstrand continues to keep his hand in business through his real estate, leasing and management company, Burt Nordstrand and Associates.

Today, with 36 years of recovery from compulsive overeating, Nordstrand is enjoying life fully with his wife, Yvonne, and his large, extended family that includes five adult children and 12 grandchildren. At 80 years old, he is skiing black diamond runs in Colorado, climbing the Pitons in St. Lucia (2018) and planning a long-distance ocean voyage aboard his new Hylas sailboat that may become a circumnavigation of the globe.

In 2011, Nordstrand founded COR Retreat, an affordable, residential 12- Step recovery program for food addicts. By 2019, COR had served more than 1,000 people from around the United States and the world. Along with funding of COR, Nordstrand and his family are active in philanthropy through the Burt Nordstrand Family Fund.

Nordstrand hopes that his personal story of addiction and recovery can help others. 

Carol Pine has been a professional writer and business journalist for 35 years. She has written 27 books and authored prize-winning business columns for Corporate Report magazine and the Saint Paul Pioneer Press business section. For 15 years, she served as an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communications. In recovery herself, Pine is a former board chair of the Hazelden Foundation.