All Episodes

Daniel Treat is a photographer and video creative working with Nexus International. Daniel and his wife were my wedding photographers, and he's lived a very interesting life, recently returning from the Republic of Georgia, where he spent a portion of his growing up years - and was briefly a national TV star during his youth! This episode is a thoughtful one, with lots of learning on culture and philosophy and the journey of life. Tune in and enjoy this conversation with Daniel Treat! 💡Learn ...

Tim Washburn is the Founder and Owner of Integrity Technologies and Computer Doctors. He has an inspiring story about pursuing a life of entrepreneurship and becoming a technology leader in our community. We talk about Bitcoin and the evolution of cryptocurrencies in our economy. Tune in for a great conversation and I hope you learn something new! *Due to technical difficulties, the audio quality is lower. We apologize, but it's still a great listen! 💡Learn about LoCo Think Tank Follow us to...

Brian Bauer is the Founder and Executive Director of the Abundance Foundation here in Fort Collins. The Abundance Foundation is a nonprofit that supports men and women in rehab or programs to engage sober living. This is a story of Brian's own path into dependence on alcohol and his inspiration for the company. We discuss personal topics like substance abuse and he has a strong message to be heard. Brian can be a role model to anyone who struggles with some sort of addiction, so I hope you'll ...

James Pigeon Fielder, a longtime Military Intelligence Veteran now serving as a Political Science Professor at Colorado State University. He is also the Chief Operating Officer of Mobius Worlds Publishing. We discuss the essentials of crisis management and the conflicts happening in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and the larger Middle East. We also learned a little bit about the role playing games industry. This is a fun conversation with a highly intelligent and interesting man. Tune in and I hope you...

Ginger Graham is the Owner of Ginger and Baker. They are one of the finest cafes in town that also serves as a steakhouse and bakery. Our conversation journeys through a high-impact career that culminated in her becoming CEO of a medical product company known as Advanced Cardiovascular Systems. We then discuss her transition moving to Fort Collins and building her own cafe. Ginger is a highly intelligent, remarkably humble, and incredibly kind person. She can be an inspiration to many young wo...

Kathryn Higgins and Silencia Cox are the Founder and CEO, of Motherlove Herbal Company. They create organic products for herbal remedies, specifically for pregnancy and breastfeeding. We talk about Kathryn's early inspiration for her business, combining her father's medical background and her mother's herbal background. We also discuss the funding, how you get something like this going, and what the values and principles are of the company. These two are an inspiring pair of women and I really...

Patrick is the Owner of Soukup Real Estate, a real estate firm here in Fort Collins and Janay is a two time Olympian with a bronze medal at the 2012 Olympics in London. We talk about Patrick's journey in real estate investment management and his business Soukup Real Estate. We also discuss Janay's experience in the Olympics and illustrate the challenges she went through. They have an inspiring story about hard work and building relationships in life. I had a a great time with these two and I h...

Ann Hutchison is the President and CEO of the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce, which advocates for business solutions in our community. Ann graduated from UNC with a communications degree and a speech degree. We discuss what the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce does and how they catalyze positive change for businesses. We also go over topics like talent development, transportation, and leadership in Fort Collins. Ann is great understander of complex challenges and also an inspiratio...

Peter and Beth are the Founders of, You can Choose, Ready Touch, and their newest venture, Mainn, is a business connection software device. Ready touch was their first and most successful business so far and it was a software company that scaled up over the period of 10 years. You Can Choose is a book and a philosophical pathway for entrepreneurs to really understand themselves. They have a great journey and you're gonna see a couple of just smart hardworking people that took a lot of time and...

Jeremiah is a relatively recent transplant to the Fort Collins area from relatively rural Maine, where he developed a couple of businesses with partners. So he's an e-commerce veteran. And so he's looking for his next adventure as he's become a real estate investor and interested party in crypto markets and different things. we go through his whole business journey, what it takes to create an e-commerce business, and starting with when he was really a high school student hustling, um, buying th...

My guest on today's episode was Aaron Everitt, a long time friend of mine, a realtor in Northern Colorado, as well as the founder of InMotion and the owner of a delivery service provider here regionally. And so this is Aaron's third time on the podcast and it's because we just enjoy each other's company and conversation and having philosophical discussions. And so we talk about. About a lot of things. We talk about literature, the evolving world of education. Uh, we talk about the legacy projec...

My guest on today's episode were Miles and Vallene Kailburn, Founders and Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer of Old Town Media located in Fort Collins. Old Town Media is the company that built my first website for my food trailer. Bear's backyard grill way back at the beginning of LoCo Think Tank. They've come a long way. We didn't really get into it, but they've won so many awards like Top 200 private companies, Top 100 women-owned companies, Best of Colorado, and many more, as...

Wally and Miriam are the owners of Wally's Speed Shop in Loveland, CO. Wally's Speed Shop is a hot rod restoration shop, for early six-volt and up to late-model vehicles providing full customizations for a variety of clients. He started in 2016 in a 1600-square-foot shop and now occupies a pair of buildings totaling 16,000 square feet. Miriam joined the business really formally in during COVID season when she gave up her existing work and has really become a right-hand person to Wally. They hav...

Eric Holsapple is the Founder and CEO of LC Real Estate Group & Founder and Lead Facilitator of Living In The Gap. He's been involved with real estate here in Northern Colorado since the early nineties, he has a Ph.D. from CSU that he got when moving back here to Colorado. He started implementing mindfulness practices into his firm at an early stage. We spend a lot of time talking about his business journeys, certain real estate projects, principles, and things like that. We also talked about m...

Becky Ezzel is the founder of Smart Book Business Solutions, it is a bookkeeping service for small business owners, especially those under 20 employees or so. She's grown her team to be 10 employees strong and they have 170 clients thereabouts in Northern Colorado. She found herself a single mom of a two-and-a-half-year-old and a five-year-old with a job that was awesome and satisfying, but didn't really allow her time to be a mom as much as she wished. She was encouraged to launch her busines...

My guest was Suzanne Miller. She is the Welcome Coordinator at the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce. She's a wife and a mom and a grandma, and she's just a really neat lady. We talk a lot about leadership at every level, even if you're not the CEO or the president of a company, how you can still be a leader within the organization. Suzanne is the founder also of a movement called Do A Liz Thing and it stems from the tragic loss of her daughter. Episode Sponsor: InMotion, providing next-da...

In this month's blog, I’m going to dip into some business stories, including my own, and enter into an examination of the role that story and narrative play in our lives. How do the stories we tell each other provide clarity and understanding, and how do the stories we tell ourselves impact our direction and habits? Finally, I’ll share some tips and observations on how we can help ourselves, and each other, write a story with a happy ending. Episode Sponsor: InMotion, providing next-day delivery...

My guest on today's episode was Heidi Ganahl. Heidi is a Republican candidate for Governor of Colorado, a Regent at the University of Colorado and she's the founder of Camp Bow Wow, as well as other ventures. She's a mom of four and married to the top barbecue guy in the state. We dig into Heidi's story with this one. Before founding Camp Bow Wow, Heidi suffered the tragic loss of her husband in a stunt plane crash, and was a single mom with two dogs after a failed 2nd marriage. The idea for Ca...

My guest today was Hunter Wylie, Co-founder and CEO of Beyond Blue Media, a full service digital marketing agency here in Fort Collins. They've grown the business in five short years to 16 full-time employees, and have a full service spectrum, including SEO, web development, apps, videos, social media,. etc. Learn tips on how to do your own digital marketing, if you're not in a place yet where you can hire an agency. We talk a fair bit about his transition to becoming a local facilitator here f...

My guest on this episode was Brad Piepenbrink, the Owner of Recycled Cycles in Fort Collins. He purchased the business in July of 2021. After 43 years of being owned by Dave Hudson, a long-time LoCo Think Tank member. Brad's had an interesting journey. He grew up in Illinois, went to college in Florida, and then really fell into politics. He moved into ever-increasing roles of responsibility, culminating and becoming the chief of staff of the governor, Rick Scott at that time in Florida. And Ric...

My guest was Sarah Lukemire, Founder and Lead Strategist at Brindle Digital Media. Sarah tells a lot about her story of getting into the marketing industry, where she earned her chops early after college. How her dad talked her out of dropping out of college to open a tanning salon. She shares her top four tips for self marketers. We share a good conversation about the most important things in life, like family. And this one is just chock full of a really authentic person sharing a lot about wh...

My guest today was Aaron Everitt. Aaron is a realtor at Resident Realty. He's a partner in a delivery services provider and he's the owner of a startup, a local delivery business called InMotion. He was educated in Canada and married a girl from up there. We spent a lot of time talking about the Freedom convoy, the trucker strikes up there. We talked a lot about real estate, water availability here in Northern Colorado to support our continued growth, and just giving back to a community that's ...

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...