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!”

Dynamic Roots Herbals

Dynamic Roots began laying down roots in 2013 with the SBDC. Dynamic Roots was inspired by 3 very passionate Rocky Mountain herbalists with the goal to grow, teach and share handcrafted herbal remedies that truly work! We now have over 40 products ready for market, a healthy membership, a distributors wait list and impressive first 2 years of sales. The SBDC helped facilitate taking our creative excitement and manifesting it into a business to be

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North Line GIS

North Line GIS was founded in October 2006 by Mike George and Trip McLaughlin after seeing a need for a GIS business to service the needs of the local community as well as the western slope of Colorado. Both Mike and Trip were employed full-time by others at the time of the start-up, so they were able to start the company with personal funds while building the business. Although both founders have extensive experience as

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Founder Erwin Germain sitting in the drivers seat of a car
TreadShare

When Erwin Germain immigrated to Summit County from France, one of the culture shocks he observed was the high traffic on I-70. After two winter seasons he was determined to pursue an environmentally- and socially-conscious solution: carpooling. In 2017 Erwin engaged Northwest Small Business Development Center to assist with strategic planning for an app platform connecting drivers and passengers: TreadShare. Over the next few years, he received support regarding entity formation, finding a co-founder, pitching,

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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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Dr. Susan Hansen
The Essential Project

Believing the traditional clinic model was missing a big section of the population, Dr. Susan Hansen created The Essential Project in late 2020 during the pandemic. The company’s mission is to deliver health and wellness services to communities across rural Eagle County through an innovative mobile care approach. Providing soft tissue therapy, therapeutic exercise, and chiropractic care, The Essential Project makes quality care accessible. Through her work with the Northwest SBDC, Dr. Hansen completed her

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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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