I’m Nick Armstrong and I’m #2 on the speed dial of most small business owners, right after mom. When they’re stuck in a rut and need a whiteboard-worth of fun, profitable marketing ideas to fill up client waitlists and bank accounts for a year, they call me.

Gathering together folks who enjoy dressing up like Wonder Woman, Iron Man, and Jyn Erso in one place sounds like fun, but for me as the Lead Organizer of Fort Collins Comic Con, it’s a way of life. Alongside my amazing team of volunteer geeks, it’s also a nifty way to have raised over $140,000 for youth literacy programming through partners like the Poudre River Public Library District.

It’s been my lifelong dream to kill the traditional business seminar dead. As Lead Organizer of Founded in FoCo, my team and I rally the Fort Collins small business community to teach free classes at a weeklong get-together to discuss such important topics as “Getting Clients To Pay By Raising An Eyebrow” and “Accounting That Won’t Make You Die A Little Inside.”

At almost every event I host, I tear my pants. I’ve proudly torn asunder my jeans leading FoCo Comic Con (while in an inflatable T-Rex suit), TEDxFoCo, Ignite Fort Collins, LaidOffCamp/CareerCamp, PodCamp Fort Collins, and more.

My local efforts landed me a few hilariously awkward photo shoots and some of the most-frequently-polished framed awards on my wall as one of BizWest’s 40 Under Forty in 2016, the Colorado Association of Libraries’ Library Community Partnership Award in 2018, and one of ColoradoBiz’s GenXYZ Top 25 Most Influential Young Professionals in Colorado in 2020.

In early 2021, I became one of the first graduates of the Leveraging Local Leaders (L3) program while also running for Fort Collins City Council in District 1. In 2022 I was listed as a Leader to Watch on BizWest’s 30 Most-Influential Business Leaders of 2022, became a graduate of the 2022 class of Leadership Northern Colorado, was accepted into the 2022-2023 class of Leadership Fort Collins, and was appointed to the City of Fort Collins Parks and Recreation Board where I get to advocate for parks, trails, trees, and the recreational facilities we all know and love.

I’m Nick Armstrong and I make marketing fun.