See Who’s Joining Us in 2019!
We are excited to introduce the new consultants who will be joining us in January, 2019! These consultants come to us with a wealth of knowledge from Marketing, Restauranteur, Partnership Relationship Management and much more. To see their full bios visit: http://www.larimersbdc.org/about-us/consultants.
Craig McBreen
Fort Collins Marketing Specialist
Craig is the owner of McBreen Marketing, an integrated marketing firm that specializes in helping small businesses develop distinct, cohesive, and systematized marketing that brings results. His mission is to help start-ups and small business owners craft an online presence that builds authority, increases brand awareness, and is built for long-term success. And he has over 20 years of experience leading teams of creative professionals.Craig is also a certified Duct Tape Marketing Consultant.
Jeff Jensen
Fort Collins Business Consultant
Jeff has lived in Larimer County since 1974 and graduated from Larimer County Vo-Tech, Colorado State University and the Leadership Program of the Rockies. Jeff specializes in strategic planning, (short and long term), new business and succession planning. He has built service and retail businesses “Budgeting and P&L decision making is critical to success and I can aid with helping build or evaluate this for your business.” Jeff has been building new and turnaround business for nearly 35 years. His consulting has been built around small business (less than 50 employees) and political consulting.
John Verderame
Fort Collins Restaurant Consultant
John Verderame began his career earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts. He successfully navigated the restaurant industry for almost twenty years in New York City in many high profile front and back-of-house roles. Verderame has helped develop and execute concepts, designed spaces, and expertly crafted food and beverage menus and wine lists.
Verderame recently employs both his hospitality and education expertise as an Instructor at Front Range Community College in the Business and Hospitality Management department where he wears his chef whites instructing college students in culinary arts coursework, cost controls, purchasing, and management. Verderame’s diverse and lengthy experience in the industry working with prestigious and elite Chefs and restaurateurs from concept to opening and expansion makes him a valuable mentor. His ability to hire, train and develop staff, and to teach management how to see what the guest sees creates a new standard of service for an unforgettable experience.
Rich Chiappe
Estes Park Marketing Specialist
Rich began his career in sales for large corporations transitioning to business development for multiple high tech startups before eventually building his own businesses. Most recently, he helped his business partners grow their aviation manufacturing business from $1M to over $5M in annual sales becoming the industry leader in their space.
After raising their three children, Rich and his wife moved to Estes Park where they now own and operate a very successful lodging business.
Rich holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Texas and loves helping fellow business owners create, stimulate and grow opportunities for their businesses.
Ben McConnell
Loveland Marketing Specialist
Ben McConnell is co-founder and CEO of Blue Parable, a Loveland based software start-up focused on bringing elegant, intuitive software solutions to businesses big and small.
In addition to running Blue Parable, Ben serves as Manager of Ecommerce and Digital Marketing for Cloz LLC, a Loveland based boutique retailer owned by his fiancée Anna Gutierrez and her mother Penne Sperry. Cloz operates two brick and mortar retail stores in downtown Loveland, each with an accompanying ecommerce site.
Ben has a passion for business architecture. He’s well versed in a myriad of business analysis and modeling techniques that enable process centric design of business solutions. He loves sharing these tools with business leaders and helping them improve their existing products and services, or create new ones.
Ben’s expertise includes software development, product management, project management, business architecture, process engineering, IT architecture, team management, service management, ecommerce, and digital marketing.
