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Success Stories

Equine Veterinary Services

Stephanie Brault’s passion is working with horses. Providing them with the highest quality veterinary care has been her profession since 1988. After more than 10 years of working in academic veterinary medicine at the University of California Davis and most recently at Colorado State University, Stephanie purchased a private veterinary business in July of this year.

While Stephanie is an expert in the field of veterinary medicine, she had no business experience prior to purchasing Equine Veterinary Services of Northern Colorado, PC. I attended the SBDC’s classes on business planning and cash flow. Donna Beaman helped me with cash flow projections during counseling sessions, Stephanie says of her work with the SBDC. The Business Planning for Success class and one-on-one counseling made it possible for Stephanie to secure her loan and purchase the business.

Stephanie’s advice to anyone looking to start or purchase a small business is to “learn as much as you can about the whole business and get opinions from a lot of people. Surround yourself with good advisers.” Stephanie has found these advisers at the SBDC and looks forward to taking more classes in the future to assist in the day-to-day management of Equine Veterinary Services of Northern Colorado, PC.

Inside and Out Pet Care, LLC

Inside and Out Pet Care, LLC is a locally owned and operated pet services business in Loveland, Colorado. Owner Kim Plache has collected some boasting rights recently.  Her small business was voted 2nd place winner in Reader’s Choice Best of NOCO for Pet Caregiver category in 2022, and in 2023 was voted one of Loveland’s favorite small businesses in the Larimer Small Business Development Center’s Small Business Week Cheers for Peers campaign.  Kim was born

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The Cooking Studio

Fifteen years ago, Trish O’Neill took her first cooking class and she was hooked! She began cooking inspired meals from scratch and it soon became her passion. Over the next 15 years she traveled for her career, all the while taking cooking classes as a hobby while on her travels. This cultivated the idea that would eventually bring Trish and her talent to Fort Collins to open The Cooking Studio, a place for amateur cooks,

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Clean Bees

Clean Bees Homekeepers Cleaning Up! When Katie Straubel moved from Florida to Colorado in 2001, she took a job doing house-cleaning to make ends meet.  Eight years later, she earned a history degree from CSU, while continuing to work in the cleaning industry. Today, she is the proud confident owner of Clean Bees, a Northern Colorado cleaning company with 35 employees and over $1M in annual sales! Katie says “I worked in the restaurant business,

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Pateros Creek Brewery

When Steve Jones of Pateros Creek Brewery began the journey to turn his passion for brewing beer into a business, he may not have predicted just how long that trip might take. Much like a raft trip down Pateros Creek – an early name for the Cache la Poudre River – the route from concept to selling beer had a few obstacles in store. After trade marking a business name and announcing it, another local

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Avid Product Development

Consulting businesses are often lonely endeavors, constrained by the experience, capacity, and moxie of the owner. When opportunity knocks – in the guise of new technologies, more customers, or economic expansion – many consultants choke, not willing to do what’s necessary to grow. When Doug Collins, owner of Loveland’s Avid Product Development reached that point, it was the opportunities new 3D Printing technology offered that crystalized the dilemma. “I had a good clientele, a good

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Spidertrax Off-Road

Thom Kingston helped start Loveland-based Spidertrax Off-Road not in a garage like some startups but in a fully equipped shop at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. In 1999, Kingston and his former partner and co-founder, Eddie Casanueva, initially snuck into the school after-hours to develop and manufacture parts for the off-road industry until they got official approval and could work during the daytime. “We were manufacturing all of our parts, using the tools of

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