As he was speaking about a woman who started a successful upholstery business, someone in the crowd interrupted, shouting, "She built it!"

"Yeah, and she built it, she built it!" Romney responded.

Speaking about another woman who started selling pumpkins from the back of her pickup truck when she was sixteen years old, Romney said, "She now sells more pumpkins and melons than any other organization in the United States of America."

Another supporter interrupted again, shouting, "She built it!"

"Yeah, she built it, too, didn't she?" Romney shouted back.

Aside from his focus on small business and the economy, Romney also took some time in his speech to discuss energy in Colorado.

"My plan is to make sure we take full advantage of oil, gas, coal, nuclear, renewables," he said, adding that he would double licenses and permits and support drilling in the outer continental shelf and in Alaska as well as bring in a pipeline from Canada.

He took a jab at teachers' unions, saying "We...have to make sure our young people get the skills they need for the jobs of tomorrow, and that means we cannot sit still with our schools performing nationwide in the bottom third or bottom quartile.... This is the nation that invented public education.... And the key is this: Put our kids and their parents and our teachers first and put the teachers' union behind."

The local Obama campaign and Democratic supporters held a press conference earlier in advance of Romney's rally, focusing on education and how the Republican ticket has proposed cuts to educations that they argue would mean fewer teachers and more crowded classrooms.

Along with telling a few personal stories during his speech -- a tactic emphasized by a lengthy video shown before Romney arrived, focused on his family and his personal life -- the Republican candidate also presented his platform as the patriotic one.

"I understand what it is that made America's economy work from the very beginning," he said. "The founders recognized something profound, inspired, wise -- and that was that our rights came not from the king, but our rights came from God himself.

"This is a nation of dreamers, dreamers who came here, dreamers who still come here from other places," Romney continued. "We build this country. We build this economy."