All Episodes

This episode is a recap of Season 3 with the team at LoCo Headquarters, Colin Jones, Director of Business Development, and Alma Arellano, Operations Manager & Podcast Producer. We go through many of the podcast highlight episodes of the season and talk about our recent acquisition of Tank, the mobile podcast studio, as well as some of our plans for Loco Think Tank in the year ahead. So, if you're curious about what we think are some of our favorite episodes from 2023, You should pop into this o...

Timiry McCaskell is the Founder and Owner of Dora Grace Bridal, named after her two grandmothers. Dora Grace has been fitting brides and prom dates and more in Fort Collins since 2011, and opened a second location in Windsor in January of 2023. The second location came along as an unplanned opportunity of sorts, and has allowed Dora Grace to expand their design offerings and demographics. Timiry wasn’t a bride looking for a better experience for future brides, nor was she a retail expert lookin...

Nathan Shaw is the Executive Director and Founder of Vindeket Foods in Fort Collins, and Benjamin Jewell is the Chairman of the Board. Vindeket is a non-profit organization that was originally founded under the umbrella of Serve 6.8, a ministry aligned with Timberline Church. Vindeket is a food rescue - they take in near-expired and after best-by packaged foods as well as small or non-standard shaped fruits and vegetables from grocers, food pantries, farmers, and distributors - and distribute it...

Shauna Hylenski and her husband Bryan have been Longmont-based entrepreneurs since 2015, when they came to Colorado from South Korea. Bryan had there built a reputation as a world-class sport and mountain climber, and they came to represent a Korean climbing shoe manufacturer and built an import brand - HMH Outdoors. In 2017, they recruited their best friends, Mack and Heeran, and Shauna's big sister Heather and her husband Aaron, to come together to form the Climbing Collective, which opened in...

Houska Automotive in Fort Collins was started in 1952, by Dennis’s father - Charles “Chuck” Houska, and still operates from the original location at 899 Riverside Avenue in Fort Collins. Chuck had been a B-17 Mechanic in WWII, and opened the business not long after moving to Northern Colorado. Dennis was crawling around the shop before he could walk, and never really worked anywhere else. He took over the business in 1974, and Chuck continued to work there nearly until his death in 1985. LJ bec...

Marc Torres started his journey with Cheba Hut in perfect “cheba” fashion - a failed drug test foiled his job prospects with the City of Fort Collins, and a snarky friend said “you should go work at Cheba Hut, I bet they don’t drug test!”. Marc started on the front line (and claims he remains an excellent sandwich maker) and worked his way up in the ranks to store manager, and eventually became the primary trainer for new franchisees. He managed a premier location owned by the founder of Cheba H...

Greg Roeder is a 2nd time guest on The LoCo Experience, and was my guest with then-partner and co-founder Josh Guernsey of Waypoint Real Estate, in Episode 45. They were celebrating their 5th anniversary and had already grown to a staff of over 30 - focused on commercial brokerage, market data, and property management. Greg, however, was increasingly focused on residential real estate, and providing white-glove service to a discerning clientele. In March of 2023, Greg made the decision to join S...

Kristin Todd joined the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado in April of 2021, continuing a career of impact in the realm of philanthropy. Prior to joining the Community Foundation, she spent over 15 years with Daniels Fund based in Denver but serving much of the Rocky Mountain Region, and before that was with El Pomar Foundation in Colorado Springs. In this episode, you will learn all about the behind-the-scenes of foundation work, and particularly the differences in how these various org...

Sean Follin is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Encounter Strategies, based in Fort Collins, Colorado but serving clients nationally, and occasionally internationally. He’s a great example of Fort Collins as a choice city - if you can choose to live anywhere, where do you choose? (It turns out - in my neighborhood!) Sean is a remarkably experienced strategic planner for his age, and worked his way up through two consulting organizations in Washington DC before making his way to Colorado. ...

Colin Jones and partner Neil Fisher founded WeldWerks Brewing Company in 2014 in a long-vacant property just off Highway 85 in Greeley. Neil had been a talented homebrewer for years, and Colin was the Director of Technology at Flood and Peterson Insurance prior to the founding. Soon, both were full-time and more at Weldwerks, and they buckled up for a high-growth journey from there - growing production and revenues at an average rate of over 100% per year! An early focus on systems and processes...

Hope Hartmann, Kat Hart, and Lisa Hudson are the leading ladies, respectively, at the Larimer Small Business Development Center, Loveland Business Development Center, and East Colorado Small Business Development Center. These regional SBDC’s in cooperation with other partners will bring us the Unstoppable Women’s Conference on October 10, 2023! Hope has been on the podcast previously (Episode 93), so this episode was particularly focused on Kat and Lisa’s journeys, in addition to all the ladies ...

Dan Garvin is the President of Colorado Iron & Metal, one of our region’s largest metal recycling centers with locations in Fort Collins and Loveland. This was my first time really digging into the industry, and I was surprised by both the complexity of the operations, and the similarities to an industry I grew up around - grain elevators. They take in various commodities, sometimes clean it up or blend it for max value, and then sell to a limited number of potential customers. In 1995, Kent Ga...

Jen Henderson is the Founder and CEO of Tilt - a SaaS platform and team that provides companies with professional, consistent, and compliant leave management. As with many founding stories, Jen’s mission developed from her own experience. A fast-rising manager with Starbucks and later Noodles & Company, she had promotions and trajectories twice interrupted by the birth of her children, and decided to do something about the vagaries she experienced when she shared the news of her expanding family...

Nathan Scott is arguably one of Fort Collins most interesting people, and this podcast episode was spawned, in part, by Nathan’s introduction of so many inspiring guest candidates! He’s one of the show's biggest fans, and he’s journeyed a fascinating career from impact role to impact role. Nathan spent time in the Navy after high school, and after a tour with Americorps, he landed a leading role in Up With People - a travelling collection of international musicians and actors, with stops in 11 ...

Dr. Kristen Truman-Allen is the Founder and Chief Experience Officer at PULP Leadership Coaching, and a LoCo Facilitator for the Catalyst Collective chapter, a post she’s now held for about 8 months. Kristen founded the business and began coaching soon after her first experience being coached, during a time when she was balancing working as an ER Nurse, obtaining her first graduate degree, and raising a 5 year old as a single parent! Kristen is an amazing human. She had a baby only a few days a...

During Dr. Trevin Cardon’s residency with Poudre Valley Hospital, he determined to follow a less-traditional path. He and his wife Allison founded Hometown Family Health. A Direct Primary Care (DPC) office, Hometown Family Health offers a monthly membership whereby patients receive regular check-ups, discounted testing and blood work, and most importantly - a relationship with their doctor! This episode explores the business of medicine, the respective family stories of Trevin and Allison, and ...

Phil Pelto is the Co-Founder of Firestorm B2B Networking and Certus B2C Networking - The Power of Network Effect & How to Build Authentic Connections, both with an increasing number of chapters and members across the Colorado Front Range. Phil Co-Founded Firestorm while he was working as a suit salesman in Minnesota nearly 15 years ago, scaled rapidly and expanded to Florida, and then hired a professional manager to operate the business while he moved to Germany to pursue a girl he met at Oktobe...

Sean Godbey founded Old Town Spice Shop in Fort Collins, Colorado with his brother and parents in 2010, with an original plan to expand to five retail locations within just a few years. They found some retail success, but the overhead and staffing complexities of retail soon shifted the plan into a more wholesale-focused operation, supplying bulk and custom spices for restaurants, food manufacturers, breweries, and more! As the lockdown response to Covid destroyed demand for retail and wholesale...

Seth Coonrod is the Founder and Owner/Operator of Timberline Audio Video in Loveland, Colorado, and also a LoCo Think Tank member. He worked as a key employee of a similar company in North Carolina in his earlier years, and founded the company immediately after moving to Colorado. In this episode, we get into the nerdy stuff of luxury home audio video systems, talking tech trends and smart homes and more, and also get a bit nerdy on business - creating quality estimates, sourcing sometimes many...

John Kefalas is currently a Larimer County Commissioner, elected to his second term in 2022, and previously served many years as a Colorado State Representative and later, State Senator. He previously worked in education, advocacy and outreach, with special emphasis on career development, housing, and serving the underserved and marginalized. John has a reputation for being one of the most progressive political figures in Northern Colorado, and we spend a lot of time in this episode pulling bac...

Drew Yancey is the President and COO of Incite Performance Group in Fort Collins, and the LoCo Facilitator for a pair of Next Level chapters. He’s also the author of a new book, his third, with co-author Larry Linne - “Leading Performance, Because It Can’t Be Managed.” In this episode, we unfold principles from this book with a theme of helping leaders guide their teams toward the work style and environment in which they can thrive. Drew has been on our podcast once before. This time, he went i...

Aaron Everitt, broker with The Group, joins us to give his quarterly update on the Northern Colorado real estate market, sharing market and interest rate updates, and examples of opportunity in any market. Aaron is also one of our newest LoCo Next Level members, a partner in a delivery service provider, and Founder of InMotion, our newest sponsor of The LoCo Experience Podcast. In this episode, we’ll focus in on the founding of InMotion, along with stories of successful scaling opportunities th...

My guests on today’s episode were AJ and JJ Fountain, bandmates with locally-famous campfire folk music band A Brothers Fountain, and co-founders and partners of Stoked Ember Productions. This was the brothers’ 2nd time on the podcast, because I think they’re a lot of fun to be around, and they always share great stories! The brothers and most of the band went on a 20-day, 18-show tour this fall, all across the midwest and southeast and points between. Followed shortly after that was a weeklong...

This week we somehow fit three of the Northern-Colorado famous Trainor Brothers into the podcast studio, with Brian, Adam, and Joe Trainor all sharing their stories and philosophies with me and with our listeners. The three brothers are a total of four years apart and were raised by their single father, an enterprising teacher that kept the family fed with side jobs and construction projects. Brian and Adam both went to CSU on athletic scholarships. Brian got into real estate - as a broker and ...