Amy Wyatt is tired.

She started the Little Bird Bakery in 2010, and has since maintained a schedule so demanding that it’s not unusual to hear her say things like “I got to sleep in till 6 a.m.”

Rest deprived as she may be, Wyatt is still baking pastries that make Europeans jealous, as evidenced by the packed seating area and long lines of devout regulars. On Mondays, when Little Bird is closed, it’s not uncommon to see people walking away defeated from the locked door, cursing under their breath.

I worked at Little Bird for the first six months it was open, and have witnessed from both sides of the counter its evolution from the mysterious new kid in town to an integral part of the Fort Collins culture.

I met up with Wyatt last week to ask her a few questions about the differences between then and now, and what keeps her getting out of bed to bake cookies when it’s still dark out.

Do you still love to bake?

I do. I do still really enjoy it. I wish I didn’t have to do it so many hours, but I do still love it.

I’m in the kitchen about 70 ... Read More »]]>

Amy Wyatt is tired.

She started the Little Bird Bakery in 2010, and has since maintained a schedule so demanding that it’s not unusual to hear her say things like “I got to sleep in till 6 a.m.”

Rest deprived as she may be, Wyatt is still baking pastries that make Europeans jealous, as evidenced by the packed seating area and long lines of devout regulars. On Mondays, when Little Bird is closed, it’s not uncommon to see people walking away defeated from the locked door, cursing under their breath.

I worked at Little Bird for the first six months it was open, and have witnessed from both sides of the counter its evolution from the mysterious new kid in town to an integral part of the Fort Collins culture.

I met up with Wyatt last week to ask her a few questions about the differences between then and now, and what keeps her getting out of bed to bake cookies when it’s still dark out.

Do you still love to bake?

I do. I do still really enjoy it. I wish I didn’t have to do it so many hours, but I do still love it.

I’m in the kitchen about 70 hours a week and then I spend 10 additional on other office stuff. So I work about 80 hours total.

Was it scary to leave behind the restaurant to open your own?

Yes. My dad and I were talking about this last night, because he helped me do so much here. We were talking about how we were kind of crazy to take on what we took on, but at the time it didn’t seem so crazy, we just knew there were just a lot of steps to get it done.

But the thing that for me was the scariest was people coming in the door and eating food that I made. It’s really strange, but the first few weeks I felt like, “Who am I to be serving random people food?” And I had all the proper licenses and had gone through the whole rigmarole, but I felt so insecure.

If I had known then what I know now, then I probably would have never done it because I didn’t know how scary it was or how much pressure there was. But I think that’s the only reason people do anything like this, because they don’t know ahead of time everything that it entails.

Are you still glad you did it?

Most of the time. If I am answering honestly. I don’t know what else I would be happy doing, but it’s also a lot to handle a lot of the time.

Do you ever bake on your own time anymore?

No. We moved up to Fort Collins last July, and I haven’t even moved my KitchenAid mixer. I have my baking pans but actually don’t even have any of the right ingredients to bake at home. My kitchen is so ill prepared. There are times when I’ll wake up on a Monday morning or a Sunday if I have it off and I’ll just wish that I could whip something up, but I don’t ever actually end up doing it.

What gets you up in the morning?

That’s a good question. Honestly, I think I feel a real sense of obligation to the customers that have supported us so faithfully since we opened. And have really become part of our lives as staff here –the connection with the people that come in really regularly. In a sense, as a business owner, I guess I could have the option of not coming into work but I have the obligation to my employees scheduled for that day that need their paychecks. And my customers need the consistency that when they come downtown, we’re going to be here. I guess that’s the bottom line. There are days that I am excited to come to work.

You always had the baking part down, but does the business part come more naturally to you now?

Having been established for a while now I can see the ebb and flow of things a lot easier, and when to anticipate we’re going to be slower business wise, and am more comfortable knowing that if I write these checks I have the money to cover it kind of a thing. There are still parts of it that are not very natural but I don’t feel as out of control with that part as I did for a while.

If there was one part of your job that you could delegate to someone else, what would it be?

I think actually probably a couple of baking shifts a week, even though that’s the part that I love the most. I would like to be able to give up a little time in the kitchen so that I could focus on the parts of the business that I need to grow. I sort of feel at this point that I am the only person that can grow it because I am the one that has the vision for where I want it to go. But I’d like to have more time to spend on doing some more dynamic marketing and updating our website and getting things a little bit cleaner and more well-functioning based on the knowledge that I have now verses what I set up as systems when we first started. So I think I would probably just have a couple more office days and less kitchen days.

When I started, there were a lot of people who weren’t used to the quality of the baked goods and coffee, and so it didn’t always go over well. You know, the white pepper and stuff. Have you noticed your customer’s tastes change, or do you have different customers?

There are a handful of people that have been here since the beginning and now trust us enough that if they walk in the door and don’t see whatever that one item is they wanted they will take a recommendation for what’s new or what’s really good right now. So that has changed. But I also think word of mouth about our business has changed our customer base. Where initially it was just whoever happened to be walking by or knew we were here and came in to find out what we were about, now I feel like it’s a little more based on people that love it here telling their friends who have similarities to them in the things that they choose in their lives, and those people are coming in. It was a steep learning curve and was frustrating for a while, but I feel like there is a greater appreciation and understanding for why we do things the way we do. And we’re not for everyone. I am very aware that we can’t make everyone happy. So we have to just keep doing what we’re doing and the people that want that will gravitate toward us.

How do you rest?

I don’t get to do very much of it these days. I’ve grown a little more accustomed to such a heavy schedule. So I am not as drained as I used to be. But when I do have time – which is not very often – I really love to go hiking. But right now I am on my feet so much that the thought of going and doing something on my feet on my day off is hard to muster. But having time to sit and read, like read the paper, or read a book, or just going to somebody else’s café, and sitting and just not being tuned into what is going on, that’s really big for me. Being able to get out of town is also a huge thing, like going to Boulder, because it feels very separate from this, and I feel like when I am in Fort Collins I am so close to this that it’s hard to disconnect because I have a list in my head of everything that needs to be done or that I should be working on. So I think that physical separation mostly, right now, is what keeps me going.

What are your dreams for Little Bird?

I would say my dreams for Little Bird are for it to become more self-sustaining, so it operates efficiently without me being on site so many hours each day. I’d like to expand our menu offerings a bit, maybe move into homemade ice creams and simple sandwiches. Also, expanding the coffee program to include different brew methods without losing any quality or consistency. In a perfect world I’d like the business to be successful enough that the shop can pay for a staff trip to go somewhere new and learn more about coffee or pastries and give us a more global perspective on what we are creating each day.

(This is the third in a series on local entrepreneurs.)

Just over three years ago, Vince Black moved to Fort Collins from North Dakota to start a church.

Twelve people gathered in his living room for that first service, including his wife and four boys, who didn’t really have a choice.

Today, the congregation at The Town Church is made up of his wife, five boys and on any given Sunday, roughly 180 other people – more or less all there by choice. And judging by the number of pregnant women in attendance, the growth trend shows no sign of abating.

While some churches may call it hospitality instead of customer relations or outreach instead of marketing, there are certainly parallels between the business and church realm. And while Vince is quick to credit God for the growth, he undoubtedly developed some entrepreneurial acumen in the process of church planting.

He shared with me a little bit more about starting a church and where his faith and creativity have collided.

What aspects of starting a church are similar to starting a business? Did you receive training for the business-related side of things (marketing, accounting, administration, etc.) before you started the Town? If so, what ... Read More »]]>

(This is the third in a series on local entrepreneurs.)

Just over three years ago, Vince Black moved to Fort Collins from North Dakota to start a church.

Twelve people gathered in his living room for that first service, including his wife and four boys, who didn’t really have a choice.

Today, the congregation at The Town Church is made up of his wife, five boys and on any given Sunday, roughly 180 other people – more or less all there by choice. And judging by the number of pregnant women in attendance, the growth trend shows no sign of abating.

While some churches may call it hospitality instead of customer relations or outreach instead of marketing, there are certainly parallels between the business and church realm. And while Vince is quick to credit God for the growth, he undoubtedly developed some entrepreneurial acumen in the process of church planting.

He shared with me a little bit more about starting a church and where his faith and creativity have collided.

What aspects of starting a church are similar to starting a business? Did you receive training for the business-related side of things (marketing, accounting, administration, etc.) before you started the Town? If so, what did that look like?

I’ve never started my own business, but I can imagine that starting a church has some similarities.  One similarity could be that the person starting a church has to be passionate about the vision and mission of the church.  In the same way, a business owner has to be passionate about their business, their services or their product.  If the one starting the business or church is not passionate, they will have a difficult time selling the product or the cause.

The Town Church is part of a network of churches (Acts 29 Network).  Although the network provides a variety of resources to help the pastor be an effective pastor, they do not offer much support related to starting the church.  The training I received came in the form of me asking questions of others in our network who were a few steps ahead of me in the start-up process.  That method of learning proved to be helpful, as it was more of an apprentice relationship than it was training in the form of a class or a book.

Is there any business training that looking back, you wish you had received?

When I started the church in October 2009, I was the only person responsible for obtaining all of the proper paperwork for becoming a corporation in Colorado.  I was the one opening bank accounts.  I was the one signing lease agreements.  I was the one making large purchases.  Aside from the purchase of my first Discman in junior high, I didn’t have any experience in any of those things.  Having some training in what it takes to start a non-profit would have been extremely helpful and would have saved me tens of hours of personal research on city and state web sites.

Are there any skills you’ve needed as a pastor and church planter that have surprised you?

The skills of a pastor and a church planter differ to some extent.  The pastor’s main concern and joy is the group of people who have been entrusted to his care.  The church planter’s attention is spread to a wider group of people than just those inside the church.  In the beginning stages, the category of “those inside the church” doesn’t exist.  A skilled church planter knows he must do the hard work of gathering people around a unified vision and mission.  For me, that started with my wife and our five sons.  They were The Town Church.

The skill of being able to gain one person to the cause, then another person and another and another is one that I had not anticipated.  In America the assumption can often be that churches started at the size everyone knows them to be right now.  We don’t often think about the fact that many churches begin with one person or one small group of people and then grow because that person or those people had the ability to encourage the growth of the group.  The juggling of such a wide variety of relationships with people who may not have ever known each other outside of the church, is one that takes time, quite a bit of care and patience.

Where did you go to college and what did you study? How has that impacted the way you run the church, if at all?

I completed my undergraduate degree in sculpture at Union University.  As a Christian, I believe God created all things.  As a Christian artist, I believe we have a responsibility to model our Creator in being creative.  Creativity has been passed onto humans as a gift and I believe it is a gift to be used as a means of worshiping the Giver.  As a church, we value creativity.  We want to see, hear and experience beautiful things when we gather as a people.  Because creativity is a value, we have attracted a variety of artists.  We have encouraged each of them to pursue excellence in their work, and as they produce art we make an effort to display as much of it as we are able.  In our current gathering space we have displayed work from our artists in the form of several paintings, photography, illustrations, graphic design, sculpture and custom wood-work.

Were you always the type of person who started things? If so, can you think of some other examples for me?

Although I’ve never started a business I am one who has learned in the process of starting things.  I’ve been an artist for as long as I can remember and have consistently leaned in the direction of creative thinking.  The act of producing art is one of starting things from scratch.  It takes creativity and faith – faith that what you are about to start is worth following through to completion.  Starting a church from scratch takes a lot of that same creativity and faith.

What has been the biggest challenge to church planting? Reward?

The most significant challenge in church planting has been remembering that the success of this church does not rest on me.  I am not the center of this church.  I am not the reason people gather together on Sunday.  I am not the glue holding together this institution.

The most significant rewards in church planting have been the rare moments where I remember that the success of this church rests on the fame of Jesus.  He is the center of this church.  He is the reason people gather on Sunday.

Is it possible to be a good church planter and a bad manager?

No. A good church planter is a manager of people.  That begins in his own home – around the people who are closest to him.  There is a church planter in the Bible by the name of Paul.  He wrote a letter to a younger church planter by the name of Timothy, instructing him in the ways of church planting.  Paul says to his young friend, if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?  In other words, if someone does not know how to manage, care for, love the people who are closest to him, why in the world should he be responsible for doing that in the church?

(This is the second in a series of profiles on local entrepreneurs.)

The first time David Sutton roasted his own coffee beans, it was on a BBQ grill.

The young pastor loved coffee, and he loved the process of making coffee even more. So when he heard he could roast his own at home, Sutton bought a few pounds of green coffee beans and set to work at the barbecue, roasting the very first of the thousands of batches to come. And to his great surprise, that first cup wasn’t half bad.

Sutton has come a long way since those days at the grill. Today he is the owner and founder of The Coffee Registry, a craft coffee roastery and delivery service in Fort Collins. He is also the roaster, delivery guy, accountant, repairman and janitor. Between being a pastor, a father, a business owner and a roaster, he works weekends and nights and holidays. He sometimes gets to the shop at 5 a.m. on a Saturday after only three hours of sleep to roast beans for the day’s farmers’ markets, which he’ll then spend all day brewing and serving. He has no pension, no health benefits (besides what he gets ... Read More »]]>

(This is the second in a series of profiles on local entrepreneurs.)

The first time David Sutton roasted his own coffee beans, it was on a BBQ grill.

The young pastor loved coffee, and he loved the process of making coffee even more. So when he heard he could roast his own at home, Sutton bought a few pounds of green coffee beans and set to work at the barbecue, roasting the very first of the thousands of batches to come. And to his great surprise, that first cup wasn’t half bad.

Sutton has come a long way since those days at the grill. Today he is the owner and founder of The Coffee Registry, a craft coffee roastery and delivery service in Fort Collins. He is also the roaster, delivery guy, accountant, repairman and janitor. Between being a pastor, a father, a business owner and a roaster, he works weekends and nights and holidays. He sometimes gets to the shop at 5 a.m. on a Saturday after only three hours of sleep to roast beans for the day’s farmers’ markets, which he’ll then spend all day brewing and serving. He has no pension, no health benefits (besides what he gets delivering by bike), no corner office and no promise of a paycheck.

And anyone who’s talked with him for more than 30 seconds knows he is a man who loves what he does.

I met David last summer when I was working on The Artisan Economy, and left the interview wishing I was working on The Sutton Economy instead. His vision for craft is almost as beautiful as his toddy (if you don’t think ‘beautiful’ is an accurate description of cold coffee, you have not had his).  He shared a little bit more about it (the craft, not the toddy) with me in the interview below.

I understand roasting coffee started for you as a hobby, became your craft, and is now your income source. How and why did you decide to make the transition from hobby to job?

The move from roasting being just a hobby to a job started with a slow transition from increasing my craft of roasting to trying to sell more to trying to make a living. I wanted to know it could work before we went head first into it, so we did a lot of thinking and trials. We were drawn to the idea of building something that would last and took each step as it came and made investments as necessary to continue down the path. Somewhere in that series of events we started a business, and haven’t really looked back.

What is your formal education background? Do you use it in what you do now? If you could go back and study something else, would you?

My educational background includes a degree in business management and a master’s of Christian education. I end up using both on a daily basis with roasting and The Coffee Registry. The management degree offered a business base and basic understanding that has proved very helpful in building a business and brand. I also continue to see spiritual implications of coffee and roasting. Coffee helps to bring community and develop interdependent relationships which I believe we are designed to have. We also have an opportunity to be good stewards of God’s creation by purchasing coffee that maintains biodiversity and taking care of each other by providing fair compensation for quality beans.

While there are no plans of formally going back to school for anything in particular, I do believe we should be lifelong learners. We live in a world with so much information and the ability to learn so much, we should take advantage of that.

Are you more of a businessman who got into coffee, or a coffee man who got into business?

The love of coffee and the impact it can have lead us to starting the business.  In the end they are both crucial to the survival of The Coffee Registry, without making money it will not exist and without the coffee it won’t either, not real sure which one is first. The coffee side has come easier, but I am learning to enjoy the business side and moving it forward.

What about the entrepreneurial path has surprised you?

I am continually encouraged by how many others are on the same entrepreneurial path, some doing it full time, others just getting started, but everyone who truly believes in what they are doing. Starting something new there is always a sense that you are alone and that no one understands, but in reality there are others. I always find it encouraging to sit down with others that are willing to share their experiences and offer any wisdom they have.

What do you wish someone told you before you started The Coffee Registry?

“Don’t compare your beginning with someone else’s middle.” -Jon Acuff

It is extremely difficult not to compare where we are to others in our field or around us and we expect more than where we are. I need reminding that it is going to take a volume of work to get where you want to be, so keep persistently honing your craft and pressing on. We get deluded into thinking that everything has to be perfect from the start, which usually leads to nothing ever getting out the door. We should instead be more concerned about continually improving our quality, products and skills.

Tell me about your roasting process.

Many roasters describe roasting as some sort of hidden art found only by a few, but its foundations are fairly simple and like other things with time and experience most could roast well. The first key to roasting is exceptional coffee beans. You cannot roast great coffee with mediocre beans, it will be mediocre. So much of the final flavor depends on the growing and preparation of the beans. Next, roasting requires attention and intention. Attention to both observe the changes the coffee is going through and the ability to replicate the results (by taking lots of notes). Intention to have a goal in mind of what you are trying to get out of the coffee (roast level, sweetness, etc). Lastly there is not a better way to measure the results of roasting than by trying it. Roasting has an interesting mix of artistry and repetition, both of which are vital to any craft.

Describe your perfect cup of coffee.

The perfect cup has a beautiful balance of sweetness and body that I can simply sit and enjoy.

(This is the first in a series of profiles on local entrepreneurs.)

David Chan is a man with a plan. Ten or 12 of them, more accurately.

I’m not sure how I first met him – he is one of those people that in a town the size of Fort Collins, most people just know. But before I interviewed the 27-year-old serial entrepreneur for a piece I did for Relevant Magazine a few months ago, the only thing I knew about his actual job was that he made small, delicious pies and seemed passionate about bags for ultimate Frisbee.

As it turns out, David doesn’t make those pies anymore (at least not professionally) but he does wear quite a few other hats (and, for the record, blue sambas with gold stripes) for quite a few other companies, many of which are his own creation.

The Northern Arizona University MBA graduate has started 11 companies, five of which he is still actively involved in. They range from a custom bowtie business to a biomedical engineering company, and the majority of his work is online. The only consistencies in his average day are a shower and three eggs. After that, it’s a gamble.

I had the privilege of ... Read More »]]>

(This is the first in a series of profiles on local entrepreneurs.)

David Chan is a man with a plan. Ten or 12 of them, more accurately.

I’m not sure how I first met him – he is one of those people that in a town the size of Fort Collins, most people just know. But before I interviewed the 27-year-old serial entrepreneur for a piece I did for Relevant Magazine a few months ago, the only thing I knew about his actual job was that he made small, delicious pies and seemed passionate about bags for ultimate Frisbee.

As it turns out, David doesn’t make those pies anymore (at least not professionally) but he does wear quite a few other hats (and, for the record, blue sambas with gold stripes) for quite a few other companies, many of which are his own creation.

The Northern Arizona University MBA graduate has started 11 companies, five of which he is still actively involved in. They range from a custom bowtie business to a biomedical engineering company, and the majority of his work is online. The only consistencies in his average day are a shower and three eggs. After that, it’s a gamble.

I had the privilege of interviewing him last week (well, actually, I emailed him some questions and then he recorded this audio file of his answers). He shared his entrepreneurial wisdom, fears, thoughts and ideas. I hope it inspires some of your own.

Listen to the interview here: Chan can

The questions are below if you’d like to reference them.

First off, could you explain briefly what entrepreneurial projects you are involved in currently?

You’ve started several businesses in various fields. Are you still looking for the right fit, or is it the starting of things that is the right fit?

What kind of shoes do you wear and what does the average day look like in them?

If you could go back in time and tell 18-year-old David something besides to invest in Apple and stop wearing wide-leg jeans (this is assuming, perhaps falsely, that you 1. wore wide-leg jeans and 2. consider the wearing of them a mistake), what would you tell him?

What is you biggest business/career-related fear?

What first attracted you to entrepreneurism? What about it attracts you still?

How does owning a business affect the way you work?

You said some beautiful things the last time we spoke about the innate desire to create. Can you explain for new readers how that desire relates to being an entrepreneur in your life?

A couple weeks ago Steven finished a bookshelf for our friend David. It is a tall skeleton of a piece, and disappears when you look at it from certain angles, just like that tall kid in 10th grade. But more finished looking.  At other angles, it is strident and sturdy and confident, very much unlike that kid. Regardless of the angle, it is a bookman’s shelf, built to let its contents speak for themselves, whether they be encyclopedias or porcelain kittens or whatever David decides to fill it with. Your guess is as good as mine.

David’s shelf is the first finished piece in the line of furniture that Steven and Cassie are designing. It is a great first piece. The bar is set and it is set high (about 6 feet, to be exact).

We made the delivery into a small celebration with some of the cream of the cream of the crop at David’s, just to start things off right. We had some great cheese and whiskey and encouragement, and it felt right. Between the support and the scotch, Steven and I left hopeful and energized for the next big push. The desk awaits.

This night was notable in ... Read More »]]>

A couple weeks ago Steven finished a bookshelf for our friend David. It is a tall skeleton of a piece, and disappears when you look at it from certain angles, just like that tall kid in 10^th grade. But more finished looking.  At other angles, it is strident and sturdy and confident, very much unlike that kid. Regardless of the angle, it is a bookman’s shelf, built to let its contents speak for themselves, whether they be encyclopedias or porcelain kittens or whatever David decides to fill it with. Your guess is as good as mine.

David’s shelf is the first finished piece in the line of furniture that Steven and Cassie are designing. It is a great first piece. The bar is set and it is set high (about 6 feet, to be exact).

We made the delivery into a small celebration with some of the cream of the cream of the crop at David’s, just to start things off right. We had some great cheese and whiskey and encouragement, and it felt right. Between the support and the scotch, Steven and I left hopeful and energized for the next big push. The desk awaits.

This night was notable in our entrepreneurial path not so much because of the piece or the sale, but because we remembered that a company is only as good as the people that surround it, and there’s a lot more to that group than the man with the hammer.  And the more we share the process with the people around us, the more ideas are tossed around and the more refined our own becomes. This has been integral to our vision from the get-go.

Allowing people to celebrate with us in our small accomplishments has made the path towards (hopefully) profit feel less like a means to an end and a lot more like a small party with great whiskey.

All the photo cred in the world (and especially in the post) goes to Cassie Blair.

My husband, Steven, and I own Wild West Workshop, a furniture company that we operate out of a generous friend’s backyard. Steven and our friend Cassie design the furniture, Steven builds it, and I keep up with the website and talk to people about what we do. If all goes well, a few of them leave our conversations with a new piece of artwork that doubles as a great table/chair/desk/etc.

It wasn’t long after we got started on the entrepreneurial path that we realized it looked a lot less like forging our way through the wilderness than it did asking for directions on a crowded sidewalk. Luckily, here in Northern Colorado, we’ve found seasoned business owners and fellow business babies willing to stop and offer both wisdom and commiseration, mostly respectively.

This blog is a collection of those interactions. The advice we wish we knew sooner, the invaluable resources we’ve discovered, stories of success and failure, a glimpse into the minds of those that turn ideas into things and things into money, and the reasons why the world is a better ... Read More »]]> My name is Maggie Shafer, I live in Fort Collins, Colo., and as of August 4, 2012, I am a business woman.

My husband, Steven, and I own Wild West Workshop, a furniture company that we operate out of a generous friend’s backyard. Steven and our friend Cassie design the furniture, Steven builds it, and I keep up with the website and talk to people about what we do. If all goes well, a few of them leave our conversations with a new piece of artwork that doubles as a great table/chair/desk/etc.

It wasn’t long after we got started on the entrepreneurial path that we realized it looked a lot less like forging our way through the wilderness than it did asking for directions on a crowded sidewalk. Luckily, here in Northern Colorado, we’ve found seasoned business owners and fellow business babies willing to stop and offer both wisdom and commiseration, mostly respectively.

This blog is a collection of those interactions. The advice we wish we knew sooner, the invaluable resources we’ve discovered, stories of success and failure, a glimpse into the minds of those that turn ideas into things and things into money, and the reasons why the world is a better place because they did.

Along the way, I’ll keep you updated with our adventures in the Wild West. I can’t promise tales of untamed success and bathtubs full of diamonds (ouch), but I can promise that we’ll create something that didn’t exist before we did. I hope you’ll stick around to see it.