We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Curt Bear a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Curt, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

LoCo Think Tank is short for Local Community Think Tank, and there’s a fun story behind the name.

In early 2014, I was minutes away from creating the DBA name “NoCo Think Tank”, as a distinct enterprise of the consultancy I had formed upon leaving my banking career, Bear Capital Advisors, LLC. Just before submitting though, I had a thought/fear – would the enterprise be geographically constrained by the name!?

Years earlier, my father and I had made an investment into a local business, LoCo Food Distribution, which was a keystone business in allowing me to open my long-dreamed-of restaurant – Bear’s Backyard Bistro. The think tank I was forming was in part to help me navigate that journey, which eventually launched (and later sold/closed) as a mobile food business – Bear’s Backyard Grill. While still on the Secretary of State website, I called my friend Elizabeth, the owner of the food distribution company, and said simply – “Can I steal your name?” She responded that – so long as I didn’t deliver food anywhere – I was welcome to it.

I was hit by inspiration during that phone call, that not only could Local Community Think Tank describe well our services, it could be taken to any community! And not only that, but LoCo Think Tank was fun to say, and full of opportunity for word play, with loco being popular slang for crazy. I like to share that it’s short for local community think tank, but it’s also reflective that owning a business can be a lonely place, and it’s easier not to go crazy if you’ve got objective peers providing you with perspective and encouragement, and easier not to drive your spouse crazy asking them what you should do when confronted with business challenges.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

LoCo Think Tank creates peer advisory chapters for small business owners of all sizes, along with chapters for their key employees! Our foundational service is a monthly chapter meeting, facilitated by a give-back minded business veteran, which acts a lot like two parts board meeting, one part support group. We tier our chapters based on business scale and complexity, so that owners of diverse, but similarly sized, organizations can gain perspective, accountability, and encouragement of a community facing similar challenges and opportunities.

Our special sauce, and great pride, is found in our LoCo Facilitators. Our facilitators are high-achieving business veterans, looking for a highly flexible and high-impact role in the communities they love. They build relationship and understanding with our members, and help them build the business they imagine.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

I’ve had a dream, really ever since I started listening to podcasts in 2017, of creating a podcast. I helped develop and served as co-host for a series of episodes for the “Small Business Storytellers” podcast with Seth Silvers in 2018, but it wasn’t the podcast I imagined and it was his baby. The podcast I wanted to create was basically a hybrid between The Joe Rogan Experience and How I Built This – but with local business-hero guests in our community!

In December of 2020, The LoCo Experience was launched, co-created with my staffer of the time, Rory Schaar. We recorded nearly 50 episodes between us, but by late 2021 Rory had departed, production had waned, and we didn’t have nearly the listenership we’d hoped for. My staff thought maybe we should just quit doing it…BUT I LOVED IT! I’ve interviewed thousands of business owners between my career in banking, my time with LoCo Think Tank, and now podcasting – and my guests seem to think I’m pretty good at it. For most, it’s among their most enjoyable 2 hour stretches of time all month,

But, I’m an economist by education, and a farmer by heritage, and you can’t keep doing things that don’t make impact! So – we made a big decision to start investing marketing dollars to grow listenership in the podcast, with the cornerstone being a full-page advert in a local magazine directed toward high-net-worth neighborhoods. Our listenership keeps going up every week, we’re getting some great feedback on the show, and we’ve now gotten two applications for membership directly from the magazine – they become listeners, hear the sponsorship and advert for LoCo Think Tank on every episode, look us up – and say “hey, I could use some of that in my life!”

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The best source of new clients for me is my existing clients. Collectively, they know many times more business leaders than I do, and they already have their trust. When our members refer new client prospects, they almost always join. The key is to work hard to help your clients become your advocates – but not too hard – because then you just look desperate, or that you’re in it for the wrong reasons…and that’s dangerous.

Contact Info:

• Website: locothinktank.com
• Instagram: loco_think_tank
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/curt-bear/