Dog’s Next Best Friend

Dog’s Next Best Friend is an in-home pet care company. The owner, Liz Clawson, started running dogs in Michigan four years ago, looking for an early morning running buddy for safety purposes. When she moved out to Breckenridge, CO, in 2007, she continued offering dog walking, running, and pet-sitting services. Due to the increasing demand for in-home pet care in Summit County, Liz established an LLC and hired contract workers to fill in when she was already booked.

Liz learned about the Small Business Development Center at Colorado Mountain College through one of her contract workers. Seeking to turn her little “side job” into a “professional and successful entrepreneurship,” she met with SBDC consultants for several free business counseling sessions. Their wealth of business knowledge was evident to her in their first meeting. They helped guide her through establishing an LLC, writing a business plan, and choosing a name for her company. The consultants gave her positive reinforcement for the things she was already doing and challenged her to think BIG about the potential for her company. Even though she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, she did not know the basic steps to establishing her own company. The SBDC helped her with the logistical side of starting her pet-sitting business. Her love for dogs and exercise make her…”Dog’s Next Best Friend!”

Imagine That Creative

A failing national economy, an iffy local tourist industry, businesses being extremely conservative with their marketing dollars…Imagine That Creative, Inc. faced all these obstacles when it opened its doors for business in August of 2008. “We really questioned the wisdom of starting a new business given the local and national economies,” said Eric Ojala, Customer Service and Sales Director. Imagine That Creative is a business-to-business company offering Web and marketing services to small businesses in

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Anna Sladek
From Lakes to Mountains

Lake and Company is a socially conscious magazine, carefully curated with a give-back message that supports adventure, innovation, conservation, and community built around lake culture. It has multiple complementary brick-and-mortar retail locations in Colorado and Minnesota selling outdoor clothing and gear. Northwest SBDC was able to help two clients through its work with the company.  Early in 2023, founder Megan Kellin decided it was time to pare down the physical locations and devote more time

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Meier Skis

“The whole idea is to keep it as local as possible,” says Matt Cudmore who started Meier Skis in 2009. “We emphasize home-grown, local wood and a product coming right out of Glenwood Springs.” Matt, who had been making skateboards for several years, began making the skis using primarily Colorado-grown beetle kill pine, working in a one-car garage. As the story goes, he gave up searching for “the next perfect ski” and decided to build

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EcoPoint staff working in the field
EcoPoint

Founded in Rifle in 2017, EcoPoint is a technologically advanced environmental firm specializing in geographic mapping and analysis for large- and small-scale projects. The company employs GIS specialists, botanists, soil scientists, and biologists to complete projects on behalf of a client base consisting of public land users like Oil and Gas, hard rock mines, renewable energy, and right of way in addition to private landholders. All of whom need to meet reporting requirements and restoration

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Brandon Duarte
StealthHunter Gear

Like that of many others, Brandon Duarte’s energy career in the coal-transitioning rural community of Craig will be coming to an end within the next few years. For Brandon, developing StealthHunter Gear seemed the best way to begin a new phase without leaving the rural Colorado home he loves. With 17 years of experience as a hunting guide in Northwest Colorado, he developed two innovative hunting products and initially sought Northwest SBDC assistance in 2022

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Muirgen Publishing, LLC

A lot has happened for Andrea Stein since she launched Muirgen Publishing, LLC, in 2014. Her first award-winning self-published novel came out February 10, 2015, with three more novels and a boxed set scheduled throughout the rest of the year. “Fortune’s Horizon” is currently available in both ebook and paperback formats from Amazon. New York Times bestselling author Cheryl Bolen said of Andrea’s first release: “This sparkling debut novel has it all: action, spies, the

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