Feb 05 2024 136 mins
I met Mike O’Connell in the fall of 2013, early into his final career stop, when he became Director of the Larimer Small Business Development Center in Fort Collins - and soon before I left my banking career! The organization had struggled for all the years of my volunteer involvement going back to 2008, and Mike was the 3rd or maybe 4th Director to serve. From July 2013 through December of 2021, Mike engineered a great transformation of the organization, built many partnerships and coalitions, and became arguably the highest-performing SBDC office in the State of Colorado by the end of his tenure. LoCo Think Tank was just getting started in those years, and Mike saw the value of peer collaboration and partnership from the beginning.
The SBDC Mike I know well, but his business and personal journey toward the role, and what he’s been up to since retirement were lesser known. Mike had a high achieving career in sales and then in management, and eventually purchased a business - Mountain Woods Furniture in Laramie, WY. Mike shares many lessons learned from his journey into, and then out of, a small business enterprise, and also shares his love for music, his disdain for Donald Trump, and his passion to bring to light the “squeeze on the average American”. He’s a good friend and a great conversationalist, and I’m pleased to share my conversation with Mike O’Connell.
The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain