BBB Serving Wyoming and Northern Colorado Spark Award Winners
2024 Winners
Colorado Family Roofing was founded in 2021 by Brian Barnes and provides residential roofing and gutter services. Family is an acronym, standing for Forget About Me, I Love You, which Barnes adopted from a college football coach’s speech to his team. Much of how Colorado Family Roofing operates is a reaction to the years Barnes spent working for a high profile marketing agency. The agency was high volume and high pressure, with good employees let go for not aligning with the sales goals. When Barnes left the agency to found Colorado Family Roofing, he was motivated to do the opposite.
As a result, Colorado Family Roofing only tracks two metrics for his team: close rate and five-star reviews. The close rate determines if the company is making a good first impression and communicating value clearly to potential customers. Five-star reviews indicate the company has truly delivered on its mission as people rarely leave any review unless they are angry with the company. Colorado Family Roofing also includes many of the upgrades that other roofing companies use as upsells, like a 20-year hail and wind warranty and a free upgrade to class IV impact-resistant shingles.
Elevation Pet Resort is a premier dog care facility founded by Kelly Johnson that provides group and individual daycare, overnight boarding, grooming, and training services to Laramie and the surrounding community. Their mission is to enrich the lives of pets and their families by providing pet care services that benefit the mental, social, and physical well-being of the pets. Elevation Pet Resort’s core values consist of:
Promoting strong human-animal bonds within the community,
Providing positive enrichment and fear-free handling of pets, and
Leading the community in promoting animal well-being.
Johnson credits much of her philosophy on how to run her business to one of her mentors, Dr. Bob McCollum. Dr. McCollum was stationed in the Navy with Johnson’s father, and became a lifelong family friend, lending his expertise he developed as a military mental health provider to Johnson which has greatly influenced her approach to staff management and creating a positive organizational culture.
Polar Bear Plumbing, Heating, and Air is a veteran-owned plumbing and HVAC company founded in 2023 by Jeremy Deslauries and Steve Gardner, with a combined 15 years of experience in the industry. Polar Bear provides residential and commercial plumbing and HVAC services across Northern Colorado. As their business started and grew, Deslauries and Gardner focused on customer service and fair dealing in interviewing potential employees. But the same went for their suppliers and vendors right off the bat. If a company was not as customer-focused as Polar Bear, they did not work with them.
Polar Bear has given back to the community from day one. The company sponsors numerous youth and school sports teams. Polar Bear made a sizable donation to St. Jude Children’s Hospital in honor of one of the owner’s daughters who lost her battle with leukemia. And last holiday season the company partnered with a local radio station and supplier to provide a free furnace to a family in need.
Trimlight NoCo is the exclusive Northern Colorado dealer of Trimlight, a permanent customizable holiday lighting solution for homes and businesses. Trimlight NoCo was founded in 2023 by Ryan Benson who had previously launched a nonprofit in Northern Colorado but needed something more to pay the bills for his family. Benson and his wife invested all their savings into the Trimlight franchise, which repaid their investment within the first year. As the company has grown, one way Ryan focuses on giving back is teaching team members a trade and an approach to work and business, just like he was taught years ago.
Benson's approach to business and the culture at Trimlight NoCo is to quietly get on with business. Benson and his team make it a point to never speak poorly about a customer, supplier, or competitor, as that says more about their own character. Instead, the team at Trimlight seeks to provide a clean, professional install of a quality product at a fair price and lets the results speak for themselves. The Bensons still operate their nonprofit, He Will Restore Ministries, which hosts youth nights for adolescents with food insecurity, housing difficulties, learning disabilities, and other challenges, as well as providing basic home repairs to families who otherwise could not afford them at little to no cost.