
148 episodes

The LoCo Experience Curt Bear
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- Business
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5.0 • 10 Ratings
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The LoCo Experience is produced and sponsored by LoCo Think Tank - and sometimes others! Our mission is to uncover as much business education as possible while getting to know the founders and leaders of amazing organizations. You'll feel like you really know our guests after each episode, and if we're doing our job well, you'll learn business principles and tips from them along the journey and be both inspired and entertained. Episodes feature a range of local and regional business and community leaders as guests in a conversational interview format. The more interesting the journey, the better the experience!
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EXPERIENCE 117 | Samson Jagoras and Darius Bell - Clearly Acquired & Pain to Profits Podcast - Funding & Equipping the Next Generation of Business Leaders
Samson Jagoras was a Division I football player at CU, and soon became an early-stage and key leader and eventually minority partner in Madwire/Marketing 360. Darius Bell came to know Samson while he was a standout employee at Madwire, and is a lifelong student of brand and marketing.
Together, Samson and Darius have created the Pain to Profits Podcast, and are building a business education and brokerage platform for the next generation - Clearly Acquired. Their mission is to simplify business valuation and acquisition - and skills development - to allow a generation of independent business owners to transition to the next phase of life. They’ve got an event coming up a few weeks after this podcast publishes - the Sales & Leads Summit on June 9 -
Both of these men have inspiring journeys of overcoming obstacles, and we share a conversation that’s both philosophical and practical. Marketing trends, business and demographic opportunities, fear, love, pain and addiction - it’s all in this one, so please tune in, and enjoy my conversation with Samson Jagoras and Darius Bell.
Episode Sponsor: InMotion, providing next-day delivery for local businesses. Contact InMotion at inmotionnoco@gmail.com
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain -
EXPERIENCE 116 | Chris Cox - Plenty Wellness & Buzz Screens - Why’s and Waypoints of an Entrepreneurial Journey
Chris Cox found relief from long-term back pain through use of CBD in 2016, and soon turned his growing knowledge of and passion for holistic medicine into a retail enterprise - Plenty Wellness in Loveland, Colorado. Plenty Wellness carries the highest-quality retail CBD products in the region, and has a very education-focused and consultative approach.
Buzz Screens was founded in 2022, as an efficient way for local businesses to reach community marketplaces - their screens are located in dozens of locations around Loveland, Wellington, Johnstown, and Berthoud - especially in popular restaurants and taverns. They allow businesses to promote their products and services in a non-intrusive way.
This episode features great discussion about the why’s and the waypoints that go into an entrepreneur’s journey. Chris’s businesses aren’t just about CBD and promotional TV screens, they’re about solving real problems - finding solutions to market pains. He’s an authentic guy and a great conversationalist, and so I invite you to enjoy, as I did my conversation with Chris Cox.
Episode Sponsor: InMotion, providing next-day delivery for local businesses. Contact InMotion at inmotionnoco@gmail.com
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain -
EXPERIENCE 115 | Valeria Ortiz - Vortiz Insurance - Serving the Underserved & Building Community
Valeria Ortiz, founder of Vortiz Insurance, offers education and insurance packages for the Medicare market, with its headquarters in Greeley, Colorado. I met Valeria at a local event and struck up a conversation which eventually led to Valeria joining LoCo Think Tank and sharing her story.
Originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Valeria worked in marketing for a similar agency before moving to Colorado. After facing challenges as a single mother with limited English skills, she found stability working at a call center. Valeria started Vortiz Insurance as a side income, which quickly grew into a successful one-person business. The addition of her first employee allowed her to scale the operation even further.
Valeria's focus on community, education, and heart-driven service, particularly for Spanish-speaking communities, has built her an exceptional network and reputation. I anticipate great things for Valeria Ortiz and her business in the future.
Learn More about Vortiz Insurance
Episode Sponsor: InMotion, providing next-day delivery for local businesses. Contact InMotion at inmotionnoco@gmail.com
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain -
EXPERIENCE 114 | Phil Pelto, Firestorm - The Power of Network Effect & How to Build Authentic Connections
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 Oktoberfest. The manager crashed the business while Phil was winning the girl - which Phil considers a net win - and years later restarted the concept after moving to Colorado.
Phil were only barely acquainted before this podcast session, and we kinda dork out on the whole B2B membership organization experience. We’ve got a lot of overlap in the way we do things and why, yet we serve different audiences for different reasons - LoCo Think Tank members are primarily business owners and there to work ON the business, and Firestorm members include some owners but more often professional sales people, and they are there for strategic partnerships, education, and referrals.
Phil has had a very interesting journey and he’s got a lot of big plans for the future, so I hope you’ll tune in and enjoy - as I did - my conversation with Phil Pelto.
Episode Sponsor: InMotion, providing next-day delivery for local businesses. Contact InMotion at inmotionnoco@gmail.com
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain -
EXPERIENCE 113 | Sean Godbey - Founder and Owner of Old Town Spice Shop - Adapting Your Business Model for Changing Times
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 purchase, online sales blew up - people were cooking at home - and Old Town Spice Shop was there to make sure the flavors were top shelf!
Sean has a great entrepreneurial journey, a local boy who worked his way through college and worked for over 6 years in ministry with Vineyard Church before founding Old Town Spice. He has a matter-of-fact way about him, and shares freely of the trials, pivots, and spicy moments of Old Town Spice Shop.
Episode Sponsor: InMotion, providing next-day delivery for local businesses. Contact InMotion at inmotionnoco@gmail.com
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain -
EXPERIENCE 112 | Seth Coonrod - Timberline Audio Video - The Highs and Lows of an Entrepreneurial Journey
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 hundreds of individual components, and then making it all work - with margin! And , we get deep into relationships and philosophy and the way of the world - it’s a very candid conversation with a guest I know you’ll enjoy getting to know!
Episode Sponsor: InMotion, providing next-day delivery for local businesses. Contact InMotion at inmotionnoco@gmail.com
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain
Customer Reviews
New favorite podcast
Stumbled on this show thanks to the Fort Collins fellas podcast and so grateful I did. Only one episode in and already so much value’s been delivered… thank you 👍🏼👍🏼
An excellent show!
Curt does a great job on this show and I highly recommend it to anyone in Northern Colorado and beyond.
Business owners must listen to Podcast
If your a business owner, you know there are decision to make when you grow, this podcast talks to business owners. The discussions of how they started to how they grew the business to where the business is today. All business owners can take away something that they could use in their own business. So listen and learn from all these awesome business owners.