Are you thinking about starting a business? If so, we think you’ll enjoy reading about how these seasoned entrepreneurs thought about the question when they were in your shoes.

Gina Kuttrus | Founder of For the Love of Aria, inc.

I had been working with therapeutic riding centers and rescues for many years. I also have a daughter with significant special needs. My goal was/is to give her a purposeful life and help as many horses as we can along the way. I also think educating people along the way is very important. Many people do not know what is happening to our mustangs. And horse wellness is actually very complicated so my hope is that people will learn through what I’m doing abs follow suit. Read more>>

Laura Pilcher | Owner, 100k Cabin

Our cabin-building business started as a way for our family to ski in the mountains without breaking the bank. We could not believe what a shortage of affordable lodging in the mountains there was. After spending one weekend of skiing in Breck and thousands of dollars in, we decided to find a better way. We wanted to build a little modern cabin in the mountains of our own. We had a very small budget, so we knew resort towns were out. Read more>>

Jacquie Harro | Artist and Counselor

I have been an entrepreneur ever since I was a child running a slew of small businesses around the neighborhood. I had many interests growing up, but none was more persistent than art. I gravitated toward art classes, beginning with drawing and painting. I had an easel in my bedroom and would stay up painting late into the night. Despite this long-standing passion, I carried the belief that art could not be a career. In college, I developed an interest in psychology. Read more>>

Emma Mitchell | Event Planner

Emm Co was originally started in 2021 to help people gain build connections and friendships. Most of the events that I’ve hosted have been social cooking classes, but I’ve since branched out to incorporate joy, art, and women’s events into the mix. Today, the focus of Emm Co has transitioned into helping people find joy in their life – whether that’s through new hobbies, having better friendships, or by experiencing life like a kid again through unique experiences. Read more>>

KIM LAGA | Healthy School Lunch Provider

I had been in the event/hospitality industry for years at this point and was flourishing in my field. I was working evenings, weekends, and many many hours a week. I met the man of my dreams and his son and soon realized that I couldn’t keep up my job while trying to be a stepmom and wife. An opportunity fell into my lap to start a healthy food company serving children’s lunches. I thought with my culinary degree and my degree in Psychology and Child Development, what could be more perfect? I felt like this was utilizing all of my abilities and would fit better into my new reality. Read more>>

Aleena Burke | Founder

When I decided to start FIXT I knew I was walking through uncharted territory but I went through a thorough process to ensure its success. It began with recognizing a pressing need in the market – the importance of maintaining clean and hygienic makeup tools. I noticed that many makeup enthusiasts and professionals faced challenges in effectively sanitizing their brushes, which could lead to skin irritations and infections. Read more>>

Rotem Brayer | Certified EMDR therapist, approved EMDR Consultant, and author of The Art and Science of EMDR: Helping Clinicians Bridge the Path from Protocol to Practice

I’ve always wanted to own my own business and focus on what I love doing the most: healing people with therapy. In 2017 I had a transformative experience when I did basic EMDR training. Since then I’ve been dedicating any minute to growing as an EMDR therapy practitioner, helping other clinicians grow their EMDR practice (I am an EMDR consultant), and I recently published a book, under the title “The Art and Science of EMDR: Helping Clinicians Bridge the Path from Protocol to Practice” Read more>>

Skyler McKinley | Regular, Proprietor, & Occasional Barkeep

I’ve had a bit of a lucky run of a career in politics, government, and media – and I don’t think I’m breaking any news when I tell you that a lot of that work, across the country and for much of American history, takes place over a dram or two at local taverns. Bars are where democracy happens. They’re special places where you never need to be in a hurry, where you can sit down and discuss the news of the day, where you catch up on what’s going on in your community with members of your community. Read more>>

Stacey Minton | Navigator

I dedicated the first half of my career to building other people’s businesses. I worked for a handful of company’s that were just starting out and I LOVED it. I got to learn every aspect of the business, help make decisions that impacted growth and every day was different. I was with my last company for almost 10 years and I had given them everything I had. Then one summer my Grandmother got sick. I was in work every day at 6 am, left for 2 hours to be with her, went back to work till 6, went back to the hospital till 8 and washed, rinsed, repeated for 10 weeks. Read more>>

Jenna Sloan | Kindergarten Teacher & Wedding Planner

Being an event planner was always something I dreamed about doing, but I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. Once I got married and planned my wedding, I really started to think about wedding planning. I was teaching full time and Avery and I decided to start this business with the hopes of it providing an additional source of income and one day possibly another career option. Ultimately starting the business was a passion project for me. Read more>>

Elizabeth Carrier | Founder, Sales & Marketing Coordinator

Chandlerie was born out of two major necessities in the special events industry: an abundance of waste after events and a lack of candle colors reflective of current trends and natural flowers. When I set out to experiment with the concept, I was shocked at how many local florists in Colorado wanted to order candles immediately! My goal was to source used wax and start understanding candle making, as I’d never made a candle before, but the demand was there and I jumped in head first. Read more>>

Dr. Macauley Mackintosh | Doctor of Chiropractic

I am a first generation American, whose father came to this country so we could better our lives. Unfortunately we lost my dad to glioblastoma brain cancer when I was 17 years old, when I was a senior in high school. It has not been an easy road since, but it is sometimes our worst experiences in life that drive us to have success in life. It was always my American Dream to open my own Chiropractic Practice. I didn’t see the point in working for somebody else for a lower wage, building their business and dream, without anywhere near the same respect, or benefits. Read more>>

Matt Price | Personal Development and Business Coach

I loved my previous career and the company I worked for, but I felt there was more I could do to impact people on a personal level. I kept having an internal feeling in my gut that I had the ability to assist people with getting unstuck and going after what they said they wanted. When this feeling started, I was hit by a truck in the middle of rural Colorado when the temperature was minus 24 degrees. This accident woke me up to what I really wanted, and that was to challenge leaders to increase their desire for personal development and take more risks to get unstuck. Read more>>

Elizabeth Cardenas | Owner-Leashes By Liz

It started off as simply wanting to create an orange leash to match our dog’s collar. I couldn’t buy one at the time and I had seen some people making leashes with parachute cord and thought “I could do that”. Friends and family liked them and one thing led to another. I enjoyed the idea of working from home and being with my dogs all the time while doing something creative. Read more>>

Poudre RiverFest | Free, family-friendly festival in Fort Collins, Colorado

The Poudre RiverFest was founded out of desire to help the Fort Collins community and to improve the health of the Poudre River watershed and its surrounding natural areas. We knew this was a big project to take on, so we thought a festival would be the best way to connect our community while simultaneously raising funds for much-needed restoration projects. The Poudre RiverFest was born out of a collaborative endeavor that brought together like-minded organizations from our local conservation community to help organize and deliver the event. Read more>>

Shiloh Justice | Owner | Leading Creator

Questions like this always makes me reminisce, because I’ve always conducted myself as a business woman even before the thought of Blink Twice came about. The process behind creating Blink Twice was a push from my family to put all the gifts God has blessed me with under one umbrella. I would always do things for my family, friends, and even neighbors; and one day my family said “you know this could be a business”. Those 7 words birthed the company I have today. All from a girl doing what she was blessed to do and a family who believed in those blessings… Blink Twice was founded. Read more>>

Lindsey L. Allen | Owner and Jewelry Creator

In my previous life as a clothing designer I had become so disenchanted with the industry. Everything was robotic, very little creativity was focused on, rather it was a larger goal of bringing in big box store orders. It felt so disconnected from where I thought I was heading when I studied and entered the field. I could see how quickly it was changing and just how much the fashion machine was adding to pollution and waste for our fragile planet. Read more>>

Lily Morgan | Formulator and Founder

I was raised on a farm, my siblings and I were the farm laborers. The work was mandatory, but we were always paid. I understood the working life of a dollar at a very early age. I spent my entire childhood scheming on how to get off that farm. One year, my Dad broke up our local neighborhoods into sales territories and we all bought bushels of apples from my Dad for $2 a bushel and sold them for $4 or $5 a bushel . When I learned how much easier it was to sell apples than to pick them off the tree, the entrepreneur was born. Read more>>