All Episodes

Today's episode was with Greg Petri, the founder of One Business Connection or 1BC. They have over 60 groups virtually meeting every week. Over 40 groups meeting live every month. And they've been in business for 25 years and have over 600 members. One BC is a networking and connections organization. And Greg does that better than anybody I've ever met. He recognizes me every time I visit a chapter. We've only been a member for a year and he is a savant and knows how to keep pushing toward that...

My guest for this episode was Sean Nook. Sean is the Founder and Owner-Operator at Black Bottle Brewery, which recently celebrated its 9th anniversary! Black Bottle was the very last business start-up loan that I funded before leaving a 15-year career in banking! Sean has grown a passion for homebrewing into one of the city’s favorite brewpubs. We talked about the challenges of managing the brewery through the pandemic, reflected on the exciting earliest days of the business, and we discussed c...

My guest today was Stephen Morris. He is an EOS implementer and business coach, and a covid-transplant to Colorado. EOS is short for the entrepreneur's operating system, as first outlined in the book Traction by Gino Wickham. Stephen's journey includes a season as a designer and crewman in world-leading yachting teams and a design firm, and eventually ascended to be a second-generation leader from the founders of that company. After that chapter, Steve became passionate about building teams and ...

Bonus Episode #1 - In this episode, I read my monthly blog post from The LoCo Perspective Newsletter. I will take you on a high-level flyover on the topics of money and prices and supply and demand, finally zeroing in on inflation - what is it?, where does it come from and how does it behave?, and what actions can we take at the micro and macro levels to confront this dragon who consumes? If you prefer to read your blogs than to listen, please head over to the blog page on the LoCo Think Tank w...

My guest today was Emily Kinkaid, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Elevate Energy Services. She's a killer, managing a team of over 150 employees at the ripe young age of 33, and she's showing the old dogs some new tricks when it comes to innovation and customer service in the completion business. She's a frackwater expert, and a natural leader, and I think you're going to love her. Our conversation revealed the importance of industry expertise in launching an enterprise, and you'll learn a lo...

On this episode of The LoCo Experience my guest was Jeff Jensen, multi-journey business veteran and among the newest LoCo Facilitators. I would characterize Jeff as an engineer-type whose passion is making businesses work better through a focus on individual growth and team cohesion. This episode is chock full of business tips, tricks, and deep nuggets. We discussed Jeff’s journeys into and out of the military, his love for business sparked while with Caterpillar Corp, the foundations for his pa...

My guest today was Elizabeth LeDoux, the Founder, and CEO of Transition Strategists, an international succession and transition planning company headquartered right here in Fort Collins, Colorado. We talked about her early days in business and relatively young transition to consultancy - where she now tallies more than 25 years of experience! Elizabeth shares principles from her newest book, It’s a Journey, and throughout the show, she shares abundantly from her special knowledge and experience....

This episode features Greg Roeder and Josh Guernsey, Founders and Managing Partners at Waypoint Real Estate in Fort Collins. Josh and Greg founded the firm five short years ago, and have grown to become a leading full-service firm in the region, with a staff of 35 providing commercial and residential brokerage, property management, and investment services. They attribute their success to attracting great people, who attract great people, who attract great people! We spend a lot of time talking a...

On today’s episode of The LoCo Experience, I sat down with Alma Ferrer, our Everything Associate at LoCo Think Tank - master of most things digital, and my super-helper on the show. Alma and I discuss some of the highlight moments from Season 1 of the podcast, and we share some of the changes coming up for Season 2 - as Little River Band would say, it’s time for a cool change. The latter part of the show is my favorite - when we get to know Alma a little better. This is a change of pace episode...

Jennifer Watson is the Founder of Jennifer Watson Leadership and Watson Wellness in Fort Collins, Colorado. The businesses allow her to pursue her twin passions of wellness and leadership, and provide her the opportunity to help her clients become their best selves - at home and in the office. Jennifer shares her journey of building a physical therapy practice starting right after college, and moving on from that venture and evolving to focus on leadership coaching and consulting in Colorado (an...

Jeff Schuster is the Founder and owner of Mechanics & Mindset Business Coaching, and also the author of Business Mechanics & Mindset - How Your Thoughts Create or Sabotage Your Business Success. In a previous chapter of life, Jeff founded and grew an energy services company called Ennovate. We discuss Jeff’s business journey with emphasis on key moments that empowered the growth of the company to over 30 employees, and we spend some time on the sale process and his later decision to get into bu...

Allison Seabeck is a bit of an enigma - and a most enjoyable enigma to be around. She’s a linguist by education, met her husband while both were teaching and editing English in Japan, and moved to Fort Collins after researching “places we might really want to live” in 2007 - recently married and unattached in the world, save for family in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (Allison) and in Laramie, Wyoming (husband, Dave). Allison answered a classified ad - like, in a newspaper - and got an entr...

A warm summer afternoon, Eric was looking for something to do while their son was napping. He and their 4-year-old daughter found some old scraps of wood and after a few hours of sawing, hammering, and nailing, the first-ever Porch Box® was created. The idea was to replace the ugly cooler on their front porch that was being used for dairy deliveries. Now, a creative, innovative, hand-crafted box that can store package deliveries, gardening tools, kids and dog toys, patio cushions, and more. The ...

Betina Pflug is a difference-maker and has made amazing impacts at every station. Betina made her way to Fort Collins from her native Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2015 - with her husband’s transfer to the JBS offices in Greeley, along with their two daughters. In the years before that, she worked in hotel management, brought the first Hooters to Brazil as part of the nuclear team, founded a food service industry marketing agency (while pregnant with her first child), partnered in another marketing agenc...

Mike Root is the Founder of Copper Sky Distillery, Axiom Consulting Group, and the non-profit Kingdom Advancement Project - all based in Longmont, Colorado. He’s also the author of For God & Country, a Discussion on Servant Leadership, especially directed toward the public sector class. Mike learned organizational development with many years of government service, first in the military and then in OIS - the Office of Intelligence Support. This episode pulls back the curtain on the distilled spir...

Amanda Frost of ProCopy Business Center in Longmont Colorado loved her job so much that the original owner of this thirty-three-year-old company offered to sell it to her! She took over four years ago, and has grown the business significantly ever since! She attributes some of her growth to their “clients are family” mindset. ProCopy strives to be the “community favorite” by always trying to provide options, services, and ways to make the customer experience better, or “easy” as Amanda describes...

Louann DeCoursey worked at iconic Fort Collins restaurant Panhandler's Pizza in Fort Collins as a youth, later spent time as a manger and then GM, and was a major Pans Fan throughout the intervening years of raising a family and building a career in non-profit. In the summer of 2017, the opportunity to purchase the business came to her radar, and her offer beat out 13 others! In the time since, Louann has navigated many twists and turns, from finding a new location to activating pizza pop ups i...

Jason Rogers is the founder of a Direct Primary Care practice called Starlight Health, based in Fort Collins, Colorado. DPC represents a change in the business model of medicine, with a membership model providing access to a physician who can take the time to learn about patients and better care for their health. Jason's journey into medicine began in college, as a negative and challenging turn in his own health eventually created a desire to help others find positive health outcomes. His engin...

Jerri Schmitz is a hero of mine, and an amazing example of putting faith in action to create lasting community change. Jerri founded The Matthews House in 2005, a non-profit organization that now ranks (per CSU research) as among the most impactful in the state and region. The Matthews House mission is to Empower youth and families by building trusting relationships and providing resources to disrupt the cycles of poverty and abuse - and they do it well. They have grown into a leading human serv...

Kris Boesch is the CEO and Founder of Choose People and author of Culture Works: How to Create Happiness in the Workplace. Emotional health and intimacy directly correlate to the context and the culture within which your company’s team works. With over 1000 hours of research conducted with the Industrial Organizational Psychology Department at Colorado State University, she created Choose People 360° Culture Audit which literally measures if your employees feel good about coming to work and eval...

Marchel Morningstar is the Owner/Operator of Consolidated Resource in Greeley, Colorado, and L & L Fabrication in Douglas, Wyoming, and he's traveled some wild and crazy roads along the path to building his successful enterprises. He's been a key employee in a fast-growing supply business, a partner in a pipeline construction venture, and is now the owner of both a comprehensive facility construction and service business, and a fabrication shop that supports the needs of Consolidated Resource an...

Dr. Jane Brewer is now in her 6th year of owning Precision Chiropractic who focuses on NeuroStructural Correction. Jane believes that this area of the neck is one of the most important things to take care of as it supports your head and the spine that holds everything together. She is a big advocate for taking care of yourself, “depositing health into your bank” as she puts it. Jane prides herself as being a life-long learner, giving credit to one of her professors that said, “Once you are ripe...

Sosamma Samuel-Burnett is the Founder and President of G.L.O.B.A.L. Justice - an NGO based in Loveland, Colorado but impacting organizations and individuals around the world. G.L.O.B.A.L.'s mission is profound: To extend Geopolitical Learning Opportunities for Biblical Advocacy & Leadership (G.L.O.B.A.L.) for local, national, and international communities to pursue justice ethically, creatively and collaboratively. Simply put, they aspire to inspire leaders from every tribe and nation to do just...

AJ is a CSU engineering grad who went from working in bars and custom car restoration to a draft engineer to starting a solar company. Understanding that what we were doing yesterday is not going to work tomorrow, AJ takes us through the struggles of starting a business. Make optimal decisions versus quick ones. Planning, streamlining operations, and learning not to hire too soon, along with engaging employees with the company's plans for growth are all part of their success. Creating a strong c...