2020 was supposed to be a breakout year for growth, but shelter-in-place orders and social distancing measures put a screeching halt to retail expansion plans.

Fast forward one year. As Covid vaccines are being doled out and the world is eager to get back to concerts, dining, group activities, and more, Utah’s retailers are not only ready for a comeback―they plan to significantly expand operations.

Both retailers and consumers are like birds in a cage, looking for a way to break out. Once the door is open, they can fly faster and further than ever before. But what does a normal, post-pandemic world look like for Utah retailers and consumers looking to spend in an economic climate free of Covid restrictions?

A glimpse into Utah’s future: major changes are here to stay

Tim Simonsen, senior EVP and partner at Colliers says retail won’t ever go back to the way it was before. Though that just means something far more captivating is underway.

“Retail is different than it was a short 12 months ago,” says Simonsen. “We’re seeing certain categories do things differently. Grocers are certainly rolling out smaller stores rather than huge superstores. Traditional grocers in our market, such as Harmons and Associated Foods, are rolling out smaller formats with different product selections and combining themselves with other traditional retailers.”

Even with these changes, Simonsen remarks that he thinks the customer base in Utah is still somewhat cautious as the population continues to strive for herd immunity. However, this shift in behavior is what has driven retailers in Utah to do business differently: with consumers pushing to go as contactless as possible, sellers have had to invent new ways for shoppers to get what they need.

“Whoever thought you would go through a drive-through lane at a Best Buy to pick up a TV rather than going in-store?” asks Simonsen. “It’s really kind of interesting to see how companies are adapting.”

He also reports that new categories like furniture, home decor, paint, and carpet stores are booming. “As people have stayed home, they’ve recognized that they need to put a little upgrade into their home and living environments. I think that’s still going to be a huge category moving forward,” he says.

More developments are also happening in tandem with the uptick in interior design-related retail. Utah is currently seeing massive expansion when it comes to developing new neighborhoods and communities in response to the recent population surge.

“What’s exciting for Utah is our residential home-building. The push and the massive in-migration coming to Utah will help create great growth opportunities for retail. As we know, retail follows the rooftops, and markets such as Saratoga Springs are experiencing huge increments in their growth, creating very nice opportunities for retail expansion.”

Many other immensely positive changes have occurred as a result of the pandemic―adaptations that reveal a move toward both civic preservation and job creation.

“One of the trends we’re seeing is the repurposing of older retail,” Simonsen says. While some of the older big boxes now find themselves in more challenged development areas across the state, new categories have started occupying these spaces and repositioning them for alternative uses.

Simonsen elaborates: “We’re seeing medical uses, assembly production and things like that going into our old retail, which I think is a great trend for Utah to create additional job growth and keep these areas from degrading… last week, we completed a 69,000 square-foot lease in a former grocery store with an international company called MicroGEM which is a medical products company.”

MicroGEM is just one example of the many companies that are interested in repurposing retail big boxes. To date, these locations are particularly attractive because of their extremely large parking fields and low rent. The proximity to arterial roads offers many competitive advantages such as access to a strong workforce.

Simonsen is optimistic about repurposing, especially when discussing the possibilities of imbuing vacant storefronts with “new life and new vigor.” In fact, he believes that this is one pandemic trend that’s here to stay.

“It’s helping absorb our older spaces, and I think that’s a good thing to keep our communities safe and bright and without blight or lack of maintenance. It keeps these centers vibrant.”

The road back to “normal”

When asked about how long it will take for the world to return to how it was pre-COVID, “It’s going to take some time, to be honest,” says Stuart Thain, senior EVP of retail and partner at Colliers. Simonsen takes it one step further: he believes a new type of hybridization will occur in the coming years―a combination of pre-pandemic behaviors and new ways of doing things that have been adopted during the lockdowns.

“If you look at retail history over the last 40 years,” he says, “We’ve gone from these massive, mega, enclosed malls to now: convenience. I think some of the trends that will stick going forward, provided we have city council approval on this, is a desire for buildings with double drive-throughs, meaning a small, multi-tenant retail building with drive-throughs on both ends. People still want convenience; they don’t want to get out of their car. I think it’s going to take absolute herd immunity for people to feel totally safe.”

Despite the public uncertainty, growth is still underway due to the mass changes in population distribution. Utah became a haven for those fleeing some of the country’s most massive―and now, most deteriorating―cities. Residents of heavily populated states such as California, New York, Texas, and Florida found Utah the perfect place to relocate during the pandemic. This migration created even more demand on an already strained housing market.

“There is another big trend going on in some of the mall sites that we’re seeing… they’re trying to create multi-family and other mixed-use opportunities on traditional regional-model locations,” says Simonsen. “We’re seeing big influxes of multi-family residential developments at South Town Mall in Sandy and people looking to do that also at the Layton Hills Mall. So, I think some of those trends will stay going forward. Malls will become more mixed-use rather than traditional.”

Still, one thing is certain: Utah’s resilience will remain unparalleled. “I think as Utahns especially―we love to get out, we love to socialize, we love to be with each other,” says Simonsen. “I don’t think you can ever take the social side of families, friends, relatives, and coworkers out of the Utah spirit. We’ll come back. We’ll come back strong, and I think we’ll all be better for it. This pandemic has created huge growth opportunities for Utah, and I think one of the concerns is just making sure we manage that growth responsibly.”

According to Thain and Simonsen, Utah’s growth will likely usurp any permanent damage caused by the pandemic, but only if there are enough multi-family projects and larger developments that pop up in an effort to help match and meet demand. “I think retail is going to continue to grow and expand in our market,” says Thain.

Many communities are seeing housing growth, but home builders are most active where there is still available land. Perhaps the ideal example can be found in Saratoga Springs.

Thain explains, “We’re not seeing a lot of new, big developments across the Wasatch Front. I think the largest one may be in Saratoga Springs. With the addition of Costco to that community, more opportunity was created for restaurants, QSR, and other types of retail uses.” He also mentions how new major medical campuses such as University of Utah, IHC, and Primary Children’s expansion are only helping to fuel future success by providing more jobs to Utah County. “I don’t think that this growth is going to, all of a sudden, stop or slow down,” says Thain.

For Utah, more growth and more developments are inevitable. This is only the beginning. “I haven’t seen or heard this many major tenants in our market looking to expand in probably eight or 10 years, and it’s great to see,” says Thain. “It’s great to see major tenants looking around at new opportunities which create new shopping centers and other opportunities for growth. 2021 and probably out to 2025 is going to be very good for retail in the Utah market.”

Though much still remains to be seen, 2021 will show just how high the market can fly when retailers finally exit the Covid cage. With tremendous population growth, strong economic fundamentals, high-paying job creation, and a culture built on social interaction, Utah is primed to see an explosion in retail development under post-pandemic conditions.

Retail growth in Utah is booming was originally published in the 2021 issue of The Advisor

Now Utah is in the process of creating a new identity for itself: one that is built on the belief that life science, biotechnology, and healthcare will become major focal points.

Building the life sciences brand

Clark Cahoon, technology and innovation advisor for Salt Lake City’s Department of Economic says that Mayor Mendenhall is pushing to connect communities, creating new programs and policies that will help life science companies start and grow here before securing long-term footholds.

“When it comes to healthcare innovation, we have a very strong foundation to build on,” he continues. “We’ve seen innovation spring up in our own backyard with the first artificial heart, groundbreaking genomic research, and a concentration of medical device manufacturing that sets itself apart from other markets.”

However, almost immediately after stating this, Cahoon highlights a glaring contrast: “We haven’t done a great job of telling our story if we’re being honest with ourselves.”

Kelvyn Cullimore, president and CEO of BioUtah, is hoping to put an end to that with BioHive, an innovation hub that plans to create a new healthcare and life science ecosystem with far-reaching impact.

“BioHive is to life sciences what Silicon Slopes is to high tech,” he tells me. “The whole purpose for BioHive is to tell the story. BioHive will be the megaphone. It will be the one out there telling the story about what is happening with our life sciences in the state of Utah, reinforcing the workforce initiatives, reinforcing the branding, [and] helping to build that institutional base.”

However, BioHive aims to be far more than a brand. With its story-first approach, it will inevitably do more than simply give support to burgeoning life science companies―it will actively promote the industry as a whole and create new jobs in the space.

“[The life sciences industry is] anchored [in] high wage jobs, but also has many entry points for unskilled workers or workers that are looking to up-skill,” Cahoon adds. “It’s seemingly recession-proof as we’ve seen it grow faster than other industries over the Great Recession in 2009 and beyond. As we tell our story and share our legacy of innovation, we’re tapping into jobs of the future.”

“We’re one of only four states that has a high concentration of jobs in pharmaceuticals, devices, and laboratory and R&D,” Cullimore adds. “The other states besides us are California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, all of whom are big, big centers for life science companies. And so we rank right up there towards the top when you talk about the importance of this industry to the overall economy in the state because of the concentration of jobs that exist here. The Wasatch Front alone is the number two in the nation when it comes to medical devices and job concentration, only the Minneapolis area is larger.”

In fact, according to Cullimore, the life science industry represents about eight percent of the state’s GDP to date. As companies in this space grow, they will continue to create more jobs in a market segment that pays 50 percent higher than Utah’s average wage. The potential for a massive increase in the state’s economic well-being and individual prosperity is huge.

Creating new real estate opportunities

Additionally, Utah’s growth in the life science sector has the potential to create a domino effect―something that will not only impact technology and product innovation but will also create a big demand for manufacturing and lab space.

“When a manufacturing operation for a life science company opens up,” Cullimore says, “That means they’ve got to have vendors who are making parts, components, [and] providing services and things of that nature…the multiplier effect for our industry may be bigger than any other industry out there.”

It’s clear that the requirements for a health-tech company contrast sharply with those of a traditional tech company―one that simply draws up the image of a few cofounders coding together in a garage. But that’s why something like BioHive has the potential to be so groundbreaking: the initiative can strategically build out real estate for labs and help entrepreneurs navigate zoning restrictions and other regulations. This is especially helpful for companies at the seed stage.

“We are on the brink of some great things in the life sciences space. One of the only things holding us back is the availability of the specialized space these companies require,” says Greg Gunn, SVP at Colliers.

“Colliers is the number one commercial real estate services firm in Utah in terms of number of agents and in gross annual sales. We have been for some time. Because of our size, we have a very well-trained and experienced staff which enables us to provide up-to-the-date and timely information for our clients. We have a worldwide network of agents who specialize in the life sciences practice. Our associates draw upon their expertise and national relationships to provide the service needed to help early-stage and well-established companies expand operations across the state.”

“[Utah has] seen significant growth in early-stage companies,” Cullimore says before bringing up an incubator that was started at the University of Utah called Altitude Lab. This incubator is a joint venture by Recursion Pharmaceuticals and the University and is poised to house over 30 companies that will all need places to go once they are fully incubated.

According to Cullimore, there are already new efforts being made in real estate development to support the growth of health-tech in Utah. Point of the Mountain, the prison redevelopment site, will house new life science efforts. Additionally, Price Real Estate is building out specific spaces designed for life sciences in locations across the valley. The Gateway is also in the process of trying to repurpose some of its retail space to incorporate life science companies and labs.

But these efforts are just the beginning; Cullimore is confident that over the next decade we will see a rapid increase in the repurposing of real estate to accommodate the expansion of the life science industry because individuals in the industry are recognizing the need for very specialized spaces.

Aside from the potential to create a multitude of new jobs and drive real estate development, Katelin Roberts, interim executive director at BioHive is particularly excited about the collective’s ability to incite real change in human wellness and longevity.

“We do get very passionate about [our efforts],” she says. “And we want people to know that they’re part of this larger collective that [is]…making a difference and an impact on people’s lives. And so that’s why we want to cast a really wide net to let people know that they are making an impact, even indirectly.”

The life science industry is boosting Utah’s economy was originally published in the 2021 issue of The Advisor

This story appears in the July issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.

Technology reshapes how knowledge is delivered, accessed and assimilated. Utah’s education technology sector — commonly referred to as edtech — is presenting unparalleled offerings set to transform the way we learn and consume information.

Nonsense, an app launched earlier this year, allows users to learn new languages by watching movies. Users watch movie clips that play alongside interactive subtitles and quizzes in foreign languages. While watching the videos, users can bookmark words and grammar. Simultaneously, AI synthesizes information based on user performance to ensure that they are receiving the correct level of clips containing the right vocabulary and grammar for an experience that is optimized for both engagement and learning.

“Using movies to help you learn languages … is more enjoyable and more effective than other ways you try to learn a language,” claims Tyler Slater, co-founder and CEO of Nonsense. “Most people today try to learn a language by just memorizing words and grammar and putting the pieces together to try to make a sentence. But it’s really the opposite: You have to learn the full idea first, then break it apart.”

“I’m gonna make him [a language learning] offer he can’t refuse.”

Slater’s understanding of how to learn languages has deep roots in how he was raised. In high school, his parents adopted three orphans of AIDS from Mozambique. While his parents and sisters spoke enough Spanish and Portuguese to communicate with the newly adopted family members, Slater found himself running into a language barrier. As Slater spent time with his new siblings, he noticed that one of his adopted brothers learned English much more quickly than the others for one simple reason: He watched the most TV. This observation stayed with Slater for years and ultimately inspired the founding of Nonsense.

“When you use something familiar, it’s much easier to learn a language,” Slater explains. “We invented stories as a way to teach each other. Our ancestors used stories to teach us right versus wrong and protect children from the elements. What we are about [at Nonsense] is reuniting concepts of storytelling and learning. It’s about helping people experience personal growth in their lives in a convenient and entertaining way.”

Slater’s thesis was corroborated by his co-founder, Martin Bekerman, who is originally from Argentina. To escape the challenging circumstances of his childhood environment, Bekerman binged TV and movies, learning English in the process which led to a job at Netflix.

After hearing Bekerman’s story and reflecting on his childhood experiences, Slater knew something needed to be created to accelerate the language learning process using TV and movies.

“The reality is … education in general is in a weird spot,” Slater says. “The iPad generation really is different, [and] there are so many problems. I’m an optimist. … My goal for our company is to become the best edtech on the planet.”

Nonsense plans to launch in Asia within the next few months, allowing time to test and scale the app before releasing it to U.S. markets. “We want to make sure we have the app … [at] full momentum before going live in our backyard,” Slater says.

“Here’s looking at you, [Nonsense].”

Today, only 1 percent of Americans are fluent in a foreign language they studied in a classroom, showing that there is a massive opportunity for a new learning model to be adopted and used. Additionally, there is significant research confirming the pedagogical benefits of using movies to learn a second language, including an increase in learners’ motivation, a decrease in anxiety and more effective vocabulary acquisition. Additionally, exposure to authentic conversation in a memorable context — while watching a film, for example — has unmatched effects when it comes to grasping a new language.

To date, Nonsense has closed deals for movies from NBCUniversal and Lionsgate and is in the process of creating an efficacy study. So far, however, at least one user is seeing great success: Slater says Harvard University student and Nonsense intern John Harrington helped develop the app’s Russian language curriculum, and after his Russian classes ended at Harvard, he decided to use the app to learn French. After just a few months, Harrington was able to skip over four semesters of French classes, saving him $27,016 in tuition and 605 hours of time.

This story appears in the 2024 Advisor, a publication sponsored by Colliers Utah.

As automation and AI applications become ever more present in our tech-first society, the nature of how work gets done is shifting. With the rise of remote work and the ability to put rote tasks on autopilot, it’s becoming less unnecessary for workers to be present in the office—a phenomenon leaving a significant amount of office space and other commercial real estate empty.

However, to power the future, the tech sector does need ample real estate for one vital thing: data centers. But data centers require an immense amount of power to run, which means as the demand for data centers rises, so will the demand for water and other energy sources to fuel them.

The state of Utah is seeking innovative strategies to keep up with the need for new data centers and is set to transform its commercial real estate spaces into these much-needed technological hubs. But two questions remain: What challenges stand in the way of rapidly expanding data centers across the Beehive State, and can the growth of these data centers solidify Silicon Slopes as the tech sector’s new kingpin?

Where do we get the water?

“Utah is an attractive location for data centers because of the [abundant] power that is available, and the cost of power is relatively low in relation to many locations across the U.S.,” Don Enlow, EVP at Colliers Utah, says.

Even so, data centers still require immense power to function correctly.

“To be re-developed into a data center, any empty commercial real estate must be near very robust power sources, as data centers are incredibly power hungry,” Enlow says. “Most of the recently vacated office space would not have the attributes to provide sufficient power for today’s modern data centers. In addition, data centers are so specialized and of such a large scale most vacant buildings could not be converted.”

While Utah has the unique combination of tax incentives and low humidity that makes it one of the top-tier locations for new data centers, the state is lacking something that these centers need to operate: water.

“Water use continues to be a major concern across all business segments in Utah, as Utah is the third-driest state in the nation,” Enlow explains. “As business and population continue to grow in Utah, wise and thoughtful water use becomes ever more important. The shrinkage of the Great Salt Lake has now shone a spotlight on what can happen if we are not mindful of our scarce water resources. It is a simple concept of supply and demand, and the supply seems to be coming more into question as climate conditions change.”

However, new technologies can help reduce data centers’ need for energy and water consumption. Aligned Energy, a company that offers a data center delivery model based on securing and expanding capacity as needed, is pioneering new technologies that can reduce the need for water as a source of energy.

“Aligned utilizes our patented cooling technology, which enables our data halls to use less space, power, and zero outside air and water (thanks to our closed-loop design),” said an Aligned spokesperson. “Rather than inefficiently pushing cold air into the data hall like some legacy data center designs, Aligned’s cooling technology captures and removes heat at its source, resulting in an ultra-efficient environment that dynamically adapts to customers’ IT loads.”

In fact, according to both Enlow and Aligned Energy, many data centers are turning to alternative or enhanced cooling methods to save or use no water at all.

“Data centers are also exploring ways to more efficiently recycle the water used for cooling and reducing losses due to evaporation,” Enlow says. “The source of the power can also be important to the customers of data centers, and many of these customers like to see data centers that use some of their power from renewable sources.”

Since 2013, Aligned has built data centers across the U.S., using its cooling technology to significantly reduce water consumption. Aligned has two locations in West Jordan with two more in the works. This means that its patented offering could be arriving at the perfect time, with the potential to fuel the rise in demand for new data centers.

Why data centers matter

Clearly, there are solutions on the horizon regarding energy efficiency. If they’re implemented properly and data centers in Utah can grow without major barriers, the state would be uniquely set up to provide an unparalleled offering and truly rival Silicon Valley and other tech hubs like Seattle.

“Data centers are [a] huge part of people’s everyday business and personal lives,” Enlow explains. “All things ‘internet’ are powered by data centers. With the onset of AI becoming more prevalent in the future, there will continue to be increased demand for data centers. Data centers and their functions have become synonymous with the comforts and entertainment of our daily lives.”

Aligned Energy agrees with the crucial role that data centers play in our society today: “Data centers underpin the digital world. They house the storage and computer systems that run the internet, power our businesses and keep us all connected. As long as more data is generated and we continue our reliance on digital services, the demand for data centers will continue to grow as well. Data centers will also continue their contribution to a more sustainable and connected future for the communities they are located in, creating stable, high-paying jobs, promoting secondary economic development, spurring innovation, driving demand for more renewable energy and more.”

As the demand for data centers continues to skyrocket, the transformation of commercial real estate will have to meet this demand in the most sustainable and efficient way possible.

Colliers has a specific process when it comes to using commercial real estate to this end. “Colliers’ professionals are involved with site selection and land acquisition for data centers worldwide,” Enlow says. “Colliers has a dedicated Data Center Advisory Group, in addition to a Data Center Management team.”

Aligned Energy takes a similar approach: “We [build data centers] through the standardization, scalability and sustainability of our design and solutions, sustainable and efficient technologies, and continuous innovation.”

While we are still in the very early stages of rolling out more data centers across Utah, the beginning efforts are shaping up to be very promising.

Signs of success

Can being fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) help business owners succeed? Joseph Kane, the owner of Footprint Floors, thinks so.

Kane learned ASL in high school, thanks to his best friend whose parents are deaf. By spending time with his friend’s family, he quickly learned the importance of fluency in the language.

Kane set his sights on being a business owner from a young age. Footprint Floors is his new venture—a flooring concept specializing in installing hardwood floors, tile floors, backsplashes and laminates. As a business owner, Kane uses ASL daily to communicate with friends and community members who have become clients, as well as his wife and children, whose first language is ASL.

Being a business owner fluent in ASL is very important to Kane because he wants to ensure communication is accessible for everyone, including the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. He is excited to continue growing his business and being a resource for anyone he can, he says.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.5 billion people—nearly 20 percent of the global population—live with hearing loss, and 430 million of those individuals experience disabling hearing loss. By 2050, it is expected that there could be over 700 million people with disabling hearing loss.

Kane hopes to raise awareness of the importance of learning ASL, particularly in customer service situations. “If more people knew sign language, it would make the lives of the deaf more accessible,” Kane says.

Bridging financial gaps for migrant workers—one blockchain at a time

According to the United Nations, about one in nine people globally are supported by funds sent home by migrant workers. In 2022 alone, CoinZoom—a Utah-based financial platform enabling anyone to send, spend, save and invest without barriers—allowed users to send $6 billion to their dependents without fees.

“We believe that the power of the blockchain can help create a more secure, inclusive financial landscape on a global scale and provide access to financial services for millions of people who are not getting their financial needs met,” says CoinZoom Founder and CEO Todd Crosland.

In 2023, CoinZoom saw a massive influx of customers utilizing their free peer-to-peer money transfer service, ZoomMe®, to send their funds cross-border, with 148 percent growth in funds sent over the last six months. This proved there’s an appetite among consumers to utilize blockchain technology to move funds quickly for a very low cost.

“Many users are utilizing these transfers on a regular basis, so we worked hard to build an app that makes it easy for them to meet their financial needs through a secure, low-cost platform,” Crosland says. “ZoomMe® is part of CoinZoom’s cash-to-crypto ecosystem for customers in 187 countries, allowing them to deposit and send cash or crypto around the globe instantly for free—saving millions of dollars in remittance fees.”

Discovering winter

Utah is known internationally for having the Greatest Snow on Earth, attracting over 7 million skier visitors to its slopes last winter alone. But according to a 2021-22 survey by the National Ski Areas Association, only 1.5 percent of skiers at resorts were Black—a number that has hardly changed over the past decade.

On top of this, the slopes also lack skiers of other diverse and minority identities, meaning Utah’s world-renowned resorts have a long way to go when building an equitable and inclusive skiing population.

Enter Ski Utah’s Discover Winter program. Thanks to generous funding from Morgan Stanley, The Larry H. and Gail Miller Family Foundation, Gregory Mountain Products, World Cup Supply and more, the Discover Winter program will fund the introductory snowsport experience of 150-200 underrepresented individuals. These individuals are provided with ski and snowboard rental equipment, proper ski gear and four free lessons. Once the lessons are complete, Discover Winter participants will be gifted a Ski Utah Yeti Pass, which grants access to a full day of skiing or snowboarding at each of Utah’s 15 resorts.

The hope is that the program will keep these participants skiing year after year. Alison Palmintere, director of communications at Ski Utah, noted the program has already had a significant ripple effect. “We even had one participant get so into skiing that he brought his whole family and kids,” she says.

Banking, en Español

Opening a bank account can be a daunting task for those who are not native English speakers. For example, many Latinx individuals use paternal and maternal last names, but most U.S.-based banks only allow their patrons to use one last name to open a bank account. As a result, transactions are often declined because the full name used in the transaction process does not match the name on the corresponding debit card.

According to the U.S. Census, over 42 million people speak Spanish at home. For them, Seis Bank—a Lehi, Utah-based all-Spanish-speaking bank—is a breath of fresh air.

According to the bank’s website, most of Seis’ employees speak Spanish as their first language, and the bank hires team members from the U.S., Chile, Honduras, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and other Latin American countries. Seis’ customers can access its banking app and apply for an account online without needing a minimum balance or paying any fees. Additionally, the bank is dedicated to serving customers after 6 p.m. to accommodate late working hours. The bank offers 24/7 support, and patrons only need a passport—not a Social Security number—to open an account.

This story appears in the August issue of Utah Business. Subscribe. 

When consumers are inundated with countless messages each day, the true power of marketing lies in precision — something recently exemplified by Owala, a water bottle company committed to making hydration easy and enjoyable.

In honor of National Nurses Week in May, Owala partnered with Clove, a sneaker brand dedicated to serving healthcare workers, to create a limited-edition self-care collection. The collection featured a matching chartreuse, cerulean and royal blue design on both the featured Owala water bottle and Clove sneakers. 

“Since day one, nurses and healthcare workers have been core to the Owala fam,” the company announced. “Our bottles help nurses stay healthily hydrated and coolly refreshed throughout their grueling shifts.”

Thoughtfully choosing mission-driven partners can allow brands to deeply connect with their target audience and see unmatched results. In this case, Owala’s campaign generated over 1 million impressions in one week.

Setting the sights

“The collaboration came about very organically,” says Taylor Morse, director of content and community at Trove Brands, Owala’s parent company. “In 2020, we offered a one-time 50 percent discount to verified first responders, medical workers and public officers to show our appreciation for the hard work they do. Since then, the nursing community has been a vocal supporter of the brand. We, in return, do our best to champion them.”

Owala celebrates National Nurses Week every year with new, innovative marketing campaigns. Some of these campaigns included giveaways with Clove sneakers, ultimately leading to a fascinating customer insight: Healthcare workers love coordinating their scrubs and Owala bottles. This organic development sparked the foundation for the teams’ joint decision to pursue the matching shoe and bottle collaboration. 

Listen to your customers

Owala’s partnership with Clove was consistently informed by customer feedback. Several smaller giveaways naturally became a full-fledged collaboration because customers wanted it. 

“Being customer-centric is always at the forefront of our campaigns,” Morse says. “Whether it’s bringing back popular special edition colorways … or introducing backorders, … we take our customer’s feedback seriously and use insights from social listening, reviews and customer service inquiries.” 

By combining data analytics and customer segmentation with an intensive focus on customer feedback, businesses can tailor their messaging to resonate with specific demographics, preferences and behaviors. 

Brands should prioritize gathering and analyzing customer data, specifically customer feedback, to understand their audience’s needs and preferences. Testing different strategies and continuously refining a company’s approach based on this feedback is crucial. According to Gartner research, “Seventy-five percent of organizations are now able to show that customer satisfaction leads to revenue growth through increased customer retention or lifetime value.” 

“The biggest takeaway is the most obvious one: Listen to your customers and find ways to celebrate the communities that love your products,” Morse says.

Celebrate your community 

Building a solid community around your brand is the second essential requirement for effective target marketing. 

Develop this sense of community by celebrating people who love and support your products — actively engage with your audience, acknowledge their contributions and create opportunities for them to connect with each other. This involves leveraging social media, forums and other digital platforms to foster dialogue and engagement. 

According to Harvard Business Review, Salesforce has created a thriving community of nearly 2 million members. The company celebrates its community by hosting the annual “Dreamforce” conference. There, 200,000 community members gather to connect and support each other and Salesforce. This community has become a critical part of Salesforce’s global operations and is a potent driver behind its $140 billion valuation. 

Encouraging user-generated content, hosting events (both virtual and in-person), and providing platforms for community members to share their stories help build a sense of belonging and loyalty. By highlighting and celebrating community achievements and milestones, brands can create a positive feedback loop that repeatedly enhances customer loyalty and attracts new members.

Target marketing should stem from genuine actions that resonate with the community. In Owala’s case, supporting healthcare workers during a global crisis and offering exclusive discounts to first responders generated significant traction in the long run. Brands prioritizing community-building and listening to customer feedback will find that a robust and supportive community enhances customer loyalty and drives organic growth. 

Here, we’ll explore the nuances of networking throughout different stages of your career and share a list of Utah’s can’t-miss networking events.

The importance of networking throughout all stages of your career

While some might assume that networking is only critical when starting a career, the truth is that it plays a crucial role in fostering growth and advancement throughout every stage.

In the early stages, networking is instrumental in building a strong foundation of professional relationships that can provide guidance, mentorship and opportunities for skill development. As your career progresses, networking becomes essential for expanding your sphere of influence, accessing new opportunities and staying ahead of industry trends. 

Mid-career networking is vital for exploring new paths, whether transitioning to a new role or industry or starting your own venture. Toward the end of your career journey, networking remains invaluable for maintaining connections, sharing wisdom and leaving a lasting legacy.

What’s most important is learning how to engage in career-long networking while avoiding burnout.

“When it comes to networking, I believe it should be something that re-energizes you and perhaps rekindles your faith in humanity a bit,” says Br33 Jon3s, founder and CEO of Gam3r Studios. “Going to every type of networking event will lead to burnout, so being very intentional about where and who you spend your time with is important.” 

Ultimately, networking at all stages of your career opens doors to professional opportunities and enriches your journey with diverse perspectives, support networks and lifelong learning opportunities.

How can you get started?

“Show up to meet someone new,” says Dr. Krista Andersen, founder and CEO of Fiksal. “Be bold and sit by a stranger. Introduce yourself and offer a genuine compliment. Networking can be transactional or connective. By choosing [to make it] connective, you will find opportunities for friendship, support, collaboration and new perspectives.”

Can’t-miss networking events in Utah

Be sure to check out some of our favorite networking events in Utah:

Founders N’ Funders: Founders N’ Funders events bring together entrepreneurs and potential investors to facilitate connections and opportunities. Stop by to hear pitches from startup founders seeking funding.

Silicon Slopes Summit: This two-day event brings together thousands of tech industry professionals, entrepreneurs and thought leaders for keynote speeches, workshops and networking opportunities.

Success in Education Events: These events are held by Utah’s Success in Education organization — a platform dedicated to improving educational outcomes and providing resources and support to students, educators and families across the state.

Third Thursday @ Three: During this event, five startups get five minutes each to pitch to Angel and VC Investors at Kiln HQ theater in Lehi before a Q&A and refreshments are served.

Utah Business’ Fast 50 event: Utah Business’ Fast 50 event recognizes and celebrates the fastest-growing companies in Utah based on percentage of growth over the last five years, offering a fantastic networking opportunity with the best of Utah’s business community.

Utah Business’ Founder Fridays: Every month, Utah Business hosts Founder Friday, an event sponsored by BONCO, Kiln and KaJae that showcases the wisdom of Utah-based founders.

Utah Tech Week: Utah Tech Week is an annual event dedicated to celebrating and promoting Utah’s thriving startup community. The week of events includes workshops, panels, keynote speeches and networking opportunities for tech industry professionals.

Photo by Ryan Sun, Deseret News

While it’s been almost a year since Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was shuttered by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, the impact of the bank’s collapse is still far-reaching. Silicon Valley Bank collapsed at the height of pre-recession panic and was the largest bank to close its doors since Washington Mutual during the 2008 financial crisis. 

Perhaps the most potent side effect of SVB’s failure was its impact on the tech industry. The bank was a niche staple for venture capitalists and startup founders, and its collapse dealt a brutal blow to the sector. For Utah—and the Silicon Slopes in particular—that meant the state’s vibrant tech ecosystem and innovation economy were in for a reckoning.

However, after its acquisition by North Carolina-based First Citizens BancShares in late March, SVB is working to gain new ground in Utah. 

Silicon Valley Bank collapse 101

At the time of its collapse, SVB was the 16th largest bank in the United States. While the bank had a significant amount of deposits and assets, the majority of the excess deposits were used to buy Treasury bonds—assets with low risks and low returns. However, as the Federal Reserve increased interest rates to counter inflation, SVB’s bonds grew in terms of risk. Investors could buy bonds at higher interest rates, which meant that SVB’s bonds declined in value. 

On top of that, many of SVB’s customers—especially those who worked in the tech industry—started withdrawing funds from their accounts when they encountered financial instability. To accommodate these large withdrawals, SVB began to sell a portion of its investments, but these sales came at a loss: a whopping $1.8 billion in total. 

There were other contributing factors to SVB’s initial collapse, including the rollback of the Dodd-Frank Act, which meant the bank was no longer beholden to stringent oversights and rules. On top of this, the Federal Reserve linked the bank’s failure to SVB’s senior management team for not properly managing the investment risk of their balance sheet and to the bank’s board of directors for failure to intervene.

SVB’s second act

Today, Silicon Valley Bank Senior Vice President Flavia Rydin sees an opportunity for the company to move forward with its particular emphasis on serving customers in the tech sector and those at the forefront of creating revolutionary products and services.

“The future is bright for SVB,” she says. “My team and I have a great opportunity to continue to build upon SVB’s 40-year history in serving the innovation economy. Our new parent company, First Citizens, recognizes SVB’s critical role in the innovation economy and is backing and investing in the business so that we can continue to support [this sector]. Clients have expressed genuine relief that SVB is here and still committed to the innovation economy’s unique needs, recognizing that our platform is extremely difficult to replicate elsewhere.”The SVB team isn’t just talking the talk—the bank announced in September that it put more than $1 billion in new loan commitments to technology and health care companies in Q2 2023 alone. In late October, Bloomberg reported that First Citizens deposits surpassed analyst estimates by over $20 billion following the SVB rescue deal. And to those who question how SVB is showing up for its customers under a new owner, Rydin affirms there will be little to no differentiators on the front end.

“Not much has changed for our clients after the acquisition,” Rydin explains. “We are still focused on serving the innovation economy. Our doors are open for business, and we are still working with companies at every life stage. First Citizens Bank has been supportive of that strategy, which has provided great comfort to our clients. Our team is still originating and evaluating new deals as early as the seed stage, and we don’t see our business model changing in any way.”

Post-acquisition and people-first

“Utah is, and will continue to be, an important market for SVB,” Rydin says. “We’ve had employees cover this market for over 20 years. We have over 100 employees in our Cottonwood Heights office [who] support our clients in many capacities. Our approach in Utah will continue to be the same: increasing the probability of success for the companies we serve. We already have the foundation in place to support our existing and potential clients. Now, we will continue to build upon our success in this market. Companies in Utah can feel confident knowing our balance sheet is much stronger than it was prior to March, and our focus has not changed. I’m personally committed to helping the companies we serve in this market succeed, and I take a great deal of responsibility in that statement.”

Rydin began her career in banking with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and joined SVB about a year ago. She says she was particularly attracted to the bank’s “unmatched value [that it offered] to the startup community.” After the First Citizens acquisition, Rydin decided to stay at SVB, given the bank’s unwavering commitment to serving the innovation economy.

Rydin’s choice to stay was also largely informed by her colleagues and the sense of community she experienced at SVB—something rarely highlighted in the financial industry. “The way my team supports each of our clients is truly unique and different from what I’ve experienced throughout my career,” she says. “Each individual on my team cares about doing what’s right by our clients and their investors, ensuring we can contribute to their success in any way.”

Charting the future of SVB

Rydin is particularly adamant about encouraging companies who may have left SVB to return to the bank as it continues to rebuild under First Citizens. She emphasizes that SVB is a safe place dedicated to supporting each of its clients through every imaginable economic cycle.

“SVB is open for business and serving our clients as we always have,” she says. “What our clients in every sector and stage need is still here—specialized teams, comprehensive products and services, exceptional service and a deep understanding of their unique businesses. Our clients have access to the same products, solutions [and] lending capacity, and we continue to have the largest team of dedicated bankers serving the innovation economy.”

When asked about the future of SVB, Rydin is particularly optimistic about how the bank will impact startups and other endeavors in the tech sector.

“We look forward to continuing to do what we do best: serving our clients from across all life stages, sectors and markets. We have more experience with startups, tech, life science and health care companies and their investors than any other company,” she says. “We remain committed to providing our clients with the level of service, specialization and expertise that only SVB can.”

Photo courtesy of MF9

Companies can put their logos on almost anything. While the proliferation of corporate swag grows, two Utah-based manufacturers are rethinking how company-branded products can and should be made. Their work is illuminating an essential question: What unique edge does corporate swag offer?

Corporate swag can build community

Cory Sistrunk’s first memorable brush with corporate swag was an APX T-shirt featuring the company logo. The immediate disconnect he felt with the garment inspired him to rethink the definition of swag. Eventually, he founded MF9, “a studio and company [that builds] meaningful brands and connections between human beings.”

Today, MF9 partners with some of Utah’s most notable companies, including Aptive Environmental and Sandlot Partners, to create corporate swag. However, Sistrunk prefers to eschew the word “swag” altogether. Instead, he wants to steer the language toward “branded goods” or “experiences” that support intentional interactions.

“People think, ‘We need swag because swag’s a thing,’” he says. But when companies create branded products solely to garner impressions, Sistrunk believes they miss a huge opportunity. Swag, when created intentionally, has the power to develop and foster meaningful connections.

Photos courtesy of MF9

“Our lens is through brand, community and culture first,” he says. As a result, MF9 is committed to developing products that can individually connect to the customer, employee and business. For example, MF9 has developed custom swag for Aptive employees of different genders, interests, hobbies and identities. Aptive-branded tents, hammocks, flashlights and YETI coolers bring employees and customers together for outdoor activities and create a connection with the business, too.

“It has to go deeper than, ‘I worked here, and I got this logo T-shirt,’” Sistrunk says. “The items exchanged are meant to complement the experience and be a symbol of something bigger.” 

Shifting the perception

Similarly, Shyft Global, one of Utah’s leading manufacturers of corporate swag, has worked with companies like Thread Wallets, Brixton, and Pura to source, produce and deliver customized products. And just like Sistrunk, Alex Burdge, CEO and co-founder of Shyft, would like to give “swag” a facelift.

“The entire industry has become diluted because the barrier to entry is so low that anyone can print anything on any blank,” he says. “When people want to throw swag out, it’s all the same T-shirt blank with a different logo.”

Photo courtesy of MF9

In contrast, Shyft helps companies design apparel from the ground up, developing patterns, choosing materials and fitting the products on models. 

“We need to shift our thought from pumping swag out … just to get the name out,” he says, explaining that Shyft’s goal is for others to “look at clothing and think, ‘That’s a killer shirt,’ not just, ‘That’s killer swag.’”

Burdge argues that when businesses move away from creating swag simply for brand awareness, they can start building a world for team members and customers. “Our ultimate goal is to make the billboard effect go away and make products a discussion point,” he says.

While Burdge recognizes that relying solely on brand and narrative has limits, creating noteworthy products can be the final advantage in a highly competitive market. “In a world where everything is commoditized, the two ways to differentiate yourself are through excellent service and making people think of you and remember you.”

Head Coach, Women’s Basketball | University of Utah

When she first became the head coach of women’s basketball at the University of Utah, Lynne Roberts found herself facing one of the toughest challenges of her career: taking on a failing team and turning her players into some of the most notable in the country.

“When I took the job eight years ago, the program was dead last, and nobody thought we could do it,” she says. “[But] I saw the potential. You fall down a lot and you fail a lot, but I believe in the vision of how I’m doing things.”

That vision has amounted to some pretty impressive stats. Under her leadership, the University of Utah has seen its audience for women’s basketball grow from an average of 500 people to over 10,000. The team achieved a 27-5 overall record and an NCAA Sweet 16 appearance during the 2022-2023 season. Alissa Pili, one of the team’s forwards, was named Pac-12 Player of the Year and earned First Team All-Conference. 

Roberts’ unique ability to help her players tap into their full potential has made it possible for the team to become nothing short of a force to be reckoned with—a level of success that has snowballed beyond collegiate athletics. Over the past season, she and her team implemented a community series called Utes Beyond the Paint, which allowed the team to direct their growing audience toward a cause. Each conference weekend, the team partnered with a different local nonprofit organization for a service project. At the game, the organization would be highlighted in front of the crowd, who could make donations via QR codes. The featured organization director was also made an honorary coach that week, and Roberts herself donated $100 to the cause for every three-pointer shot her team made.

“My family and I love Salt Lake City. I think it’s the best place in the country,” she says. “I don’t have the ability to run a nonprofit, but I try to think of ways I can use our platform to bring awareness to organizations that aren’t mainstream.” The team has plans to grow Utes Beyond the Paint next season.

When asked about her advice for other women in athletics, Roberts urges them to quit apologizing for themselves and quit apologizing for having a seat at the table. “[Women] have superpowers that we can use to our strengths,” she says.

President & CEO | Allied Electric Sign & Awning

Monica Millard Collard is the president and CEO of Allied Electric Sign & Awning Co. (Allied), a construction business she started with her father over 30 years ago. Today, the enterprise is over 100 employees strong and is a mainstay of the Mountain West region for business signage and development.

In addition to exceeding industry standards when it comes to revenue (typical account executives see sales in the $2 million range, while she consistently brings in $4 million annually), Collard is committed to employment diversification. Today, Allied hires individuals from all walks of life, regardless of race, gender or past experience. Many of the company’s team members have been given a second chance and are now transforming their lives for the better as a result of Collard’s belief that, once a debt to society has been paid, individuals need to get back to work.

When asked about what has contributed most significantly to Allied’s success, Collard cites her team. “Treating each employee with respect regardless of their role [and] showing them you genuinely care about the work they do” is, in Collard’s words, what makes her company game-changing. 

However, Allied has seen its own fair share of adversity. In 2022, a fire destroyed its primary manufacturing facility, leaving the company in disarray. 

“I was devastated and emotional but determined to not let [the fire] destroy me or my company,” Collard says. “We all rallied and set up shop in the parking lot. My team was amazing and adaptable to the crazy situation we put them in. There was real love and support from the team. I knew they truly cared about me and Allied.” 

That unshakeable faith and effort demonstrated by Collard’s team paid off. Two months later, the company saw its most productive month in history. 

Aside from running one of the most successful companies in her industry, Collard prioritizes giving back. On top of being the longest-tenured commissioner at the Sandy Planning Commission, Collard also serves on the KeyBank advisory council and is a member of the Real Salt Lake advisory board.

When asked what her advice is for women in male-dominated industries, Collard emphasizes the importance of self-determination. “Take risks! Stretch yourself. Keep your eye on the prize. Always set goals for yourself—little ones and more challenging ones. Keep adding to them. Never stop learning or being open to input from others. Listen to good books (more than once). Stand up for yourself and others. You don’t know what you don’t know, so ask a lot of questions and figure it out. Don’t worry about your competitors. Decide what type of leader you want to be and stick with it.”

Connect with Monica on LinkedIn.

Founder & Executive Director | Neighborhood Connection

Donna MacBean has been called the “Mother Theresa of Southern Utah” for a reason. Her philanthropic resume boasts decades of experience with dozens of organizations, including the Utah Nonprofits Association, Habitat for Humanity of Southwest Utah, the St. George Dixie Elks Lodge and countless others.

Currently, MacBean is a member and Dixie Sunshiner of the St. George Area Chamber of Commerce, is on the board of the Hurricane Valley Chamber of Commerce, and is the founder and executive director of Neighborhood Connection, a nonprofit dedicated to providing weekend meals for children. 

“Between kindergarten and grade 12 in Washington County, there are 17,000 students that live with food insecurity,” she says. MacBean was originally introduced to this problem at a gala while speaking to other guests who were passionate about the cause. The overwhelming number of children in need initiated MacBean’s and her friends’ efforts to start the foundation, and to date, those statistics still fuel her dedication every day. “If you realized how hard it might be [to do this kind of work] ahead of time, you might not do it,” she implores. “You have to have a passion for it.” 

Before dedicating the latter half of her career to philanthropy, MacBean made a name for herself as an entrepreneur, managing multiple shopping centers, an auctioneering firm, two service stations and a fly-in fishing lodge before founding Housecleaning by Donna, a residential and commercial janitorial services company in Southern Utah. But giving back has always been second nature: MacBean reminisces about her childhood and how her parents made giving back a priority no matter what. “It’s what we did,” she says. 

For over a decade, she participated in a group that purchased and cooked food for people experiencing homelessness. Today, she helps host Christmas Day event where she and over 100 volunteers serve food and organize entertainment for those in need. MacBean also hosts annual golf tournament fundraisers to help fund her efforts at Neighborhood Connection, which she runs out of her garage.

When asked about how she manages to get everything done, MacBean cites her boundless energy. “I’m 73 years old, but I still have an 18-year-old inside of me,” she says. “I couldn’t do this without great people around; I have the best people around me.”

Connect with Donna MacBean on LinkedIn.

One of them is Barrett Williams, co-founder of the Utah-based Off-Piste, a decentralized asset protocol that allows retail and institutional investors to create and trade pre-IPO futures on top global startups.

Named after its founders’ affinity for skiing in Utah along unmarked paths, the platform has the potential to radically alter the way we approach investing today. “Off-Piste [is] a nontraditional route from point A to point B,” Williams says. “And what we are providing is a nontraditional mechanism for gaining exposure to private capital markets.”

Williams is impassioned about the purpose behind his platform and what it’s designed to do. While many people today are barred from investing in private companies due to issues relating to accreditation and regulation, the company is hellbent on changing that.

“Just allow people to invest as they so choose,” he implores. “There shouldn’t be rules and restrictions, because I know plenty of people who don’t qualify as an accredited investor, yet are much smarter than some of these people who are accredited investors at the end of the day, and I think it’s a joke that they can’t invest in a private company―especially a top-tier one.”

Enter Off-Piste. “You’ll basically be trading, buying, selling, and minting. And there are some serious complexities that we’ve discovered on the minting and shorting side,” says Alex Whitley, co-founder at Off-Piste. “What we’re trying to do is take this really complex idea―and the mechanisms behind it which will be facilitated through a smart contract on the backend―and distill that down to: ‘What does the user need to know to participate in these markets?’ 

“Right now, there is a huge learning curve with participating in crypto in general. It requires multiple [hot] wallets, multiple applications, and a whole ton of education that you have to do yourself. I believe that that can be solved through a user interface. And that’s what I’ve done my whole career: take these really complex ideas and distill them down into the core functionality to achieve the outcome that a user would want.”

UI is an issue. To date, many consumer-facing DeFi applications―even some of the most prominent like Binance―admit that the UI in this industry has been notoriously lackluster. But that’s not the only issue when it comes to popularizing DeFi. TaxBit, which recently raised its $100-million Series A, was founded in Utah in 2018 to help ameliorate the issue of cryptocurrency tax reporting and accounting and ensure these activities are in compliance with tax laws. By connecting the consumer, enterprise, and government cryptocurrency tax ecosystems, TaxBit is helping drive cryptocurrency adoption at scale.

“At TaxBit, we believe that one of the greatest financial innovations and disruptions of the last century, cryptocurrency, should not be weighed down by the complexities of tax and accounting,” says Michelle O’Connor, the company’s VP of marketing. “The past 12-months at TaxBit have been monumental, as our products are removing some of the largest roadblocks of this emerging asset class. We are excited to continue to scale world-class tax and accounting products so that cryptocurrency can continue to thrive among enterprises, consumers, and governments.”

TaxBit’s massive round of funding and its commitment to create 1,700 high-paying Utah jobs in the next 10 years is evidence that DeFi has a solid foothold here. The question is, will well-funded companies like TaxBit operate under winner-takes-all principles, or will new startups in the space start popping up as a result?

The opportunity to change, well, everything

While many are excited by the prospect of DeFi, most people aren’t fully aware of the kind of positive change it could have on our society.

“It falls into this democratization of access,” Williams tells me. “Now, if that’s through a vehicle like us where we’re helping people gain exposure to late-stage, pre-IPO companies, or it’s banking the bankless―I think that that’s one of the coolest things.

“Now somebody in Africa, South America, or some places in Asia where they don’t have access to brick-and-mortar financial institutions can have a digital bank. And they can have their money on-chain and hedge against inflation.”

Creating a tool to fight inflation is essential for the health of the global economy, especially in countries subject to authoritarian regimes. It’s something that could dramatically impact individual wellbeing and allow people access to opportunities never available to them before.

“The powerful thing about blockchain is that it creates more economic equity by removing the gatekeepers,” says Paystand co-founder Jeremy Almond.

That goes for more than just consumer-facing technologies. Many business payments remain tied to outdated systems that rely on paper-based processes and transaction fees demanded by credit cards―something Paystand is dedicated to changing. TaxBit recognizes similar problems.

“Even before Covid, the legacy financial system limited the capacity of the US to grow in the modern financial world,” explains O’Connor. “Credit cards take several days to process, and when they do, small businesses are left to foot the exorbitantly high processing fees.

“However, as those who are already familiar with digital assets know, a solution does exist. A digital asset system can fix many of the failings of legacy finance to rapidly and efficiently transmit money through its economy to get to those hard-to-reach spots that are underserved in the economy. In a range of financial services sectors, the legacy system could be supplanted.”

Businesses can expect to see other meaningful changes as well. There are already strides to offer decentralized cloud and other storage options, and DeFi could dramatically transform healthcare by moving benefit payments options to on-chain systems. Expanding use cases for DeFi to everyday occurrences will be essential to the proliferation of these technologies, and that’s something James Whitley, Alex Whitley’s brother and Off-Piste’s third co-founder, deeply understands.

“We’re at this uber interesting inflection point in the DeFi space,” he says. “Originally, it was people figuring out what the use cases [were]…but all of it has been confined to hardcore crypto users and traders, and a lot of it is new ways to trade little coins around. I think we’re at a point where you’re starting to see people think about: ‘How can you address traditional finance problems by using the technologies and the opportunities that DeFi unlocks?’ and that’s where we see ourselves [at Off-Piste].”

“The beauty about what we’re building is, if you look at who uses crypto today or who uses DeFi in particular, it’s a very, very small group of people,” says Williams. “I think that where we come in is helping the non-crypto native user get excited about this space.”

If Off-Piste’s vision holds true, the company could provide a very meaningful offering that would bridge DeFi with our everyday lives. And that could inspire other Utah-based startups to do the same. However, for those Utahns looking to actively expand the DeFi community in their home state, James Whitley urges them to get going now.

“Dive in,” he says. “Read whitepapers that are out there. Participate in communities, whether that’s Discord or Telegram. It’s a super open community, so dive in, ask questions about what you don’t understand―generally, there’s somebody there that is super stoked to give you an answer.”

Williams agrees, arguing that the number one job in the future will be engineering. For technical individuals looking for a place to start, exploring languages like Rust and Solidity will be key for building decentralized applications (or dApps as they’re known in the DeFi world), he says.

The opportunity to change… Utah

Blockchain is the technology that underpins DeFi and cryptocurrencies. In its most simplified form: a blockchain is a decentralized data structure that verifies the transfer of funds and information without the need for a middleman to do the verification process for you.

Unlike a centralized platform that updates information from a single authoritative source, the entire blockchain stores data across a wide network composed of many different computers. Every time information is updated from one source on the “chain,” the entire network is simultaneously updated.

As a result, blockchain allows for immutable, transparent, and highly secure transactions―without the need for a human or institutional third party to offer assurance.

DeFi then, broadly, is the set of applications, processes, protocols, and technologies that are designed to disintermediate financial exchanges. These platforms operate without brokerages, exchanges, or banks, meaning unprecedented power can be restored to individuals when it comes to their financial agency.

And cryptocurrency is a digital asset that can be used as an exchange―like money―or used simply as a store of value. Each cryptocurrency uses cryptography to secure transactions that are made online.

There’s no arguing that these new innovations are gaining traction―and very quickly. With Miami poised to become the next great startup city, Mayor Francis Suarez wants to see the city become our nation’s Bitcoin capital. Even Wyoming wants to get in the game and now recognizes digital autonomous organizations (DAOs) as LLCs, making the state an exciting place to house these new blockchain-native constitutions.

Utah isn’t quite there yet. Still, “Utah has a really great business culture, and money goes where money flows,” says Williams. “We’re seeing a lot of money flow into DeFi, so I think that we’ll see some more companies in blockchain being built here.”

Just as The University of Utah became the driving force behind Utah’s biotech boom by adding more and more classes that encouraged studies in that space, the U is now launching blockchain courses for its students. According to Williams, this could lead to a local base of talent for DeFi, propelling significant growth in the industry.

And blockchain companies are opening satellite offices in Utah. Paystand, a leading B2B DeFi platform, saw such explosive growth during the pandemic that it opened its third office in Utah (it’s headquarters are in Scotts Valley, and it has another office in Guadalajara).

The company uses blockchain and cloud technology to help businesses make B2B payments without relying on the legacy payment system, revenue-draining transaction fees, and the hours wasted on menial AR tasks. To date, over 260,000 companies transact over its direct bank network, showing the potential DeFi has outside of the consumer space alone.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Utah becomes the new center for DeFi,” says Aliyah Nance, VP of people at Paystand. “The people here are hardworking and talented, but also grounded. It’s the perfect mix for leading this next wave of decentralization.”

“That climate,” adds Almond, “is one that operates under less bureaucracy and more efficiency in business―it’s actually very good incubation grounds for the DeFi community.”

“[Utah] has an incredible ecosystem of industry-leading tech companies and an impressive collection of best-in-class talent,” adds O’Connor. “TaxBit is experiencing a rapid growth period after our massive Series A earlier this year. We’re hiring with plans to more than double the team by the end of year. With this growth it will inherently attract like minded businesses to the area!”

“You have at the top end of private flight, the NetJets and the FlexJets, which basically appeal to that top 0.05 percent,” says Michael Patwin, VP of marketing at CB Skyshare. To contrast, CB Skyshare caterers to the top two percent. “That’s a massive difference in how many people can actually afford the product and be able to experience the product.”

The company differentiates themselves by allowing clients to own a fraction of an airplane, while gaining them access to the entire fleet―and they tear down and rebuild all their pre-owned planes to make them look and feel brand new. This can be something of a leg up compared with NetJets, a more expensive competitor that―even if a client pays into a new plane―doesn’t guarantee they won’t wind up flying on a much older plane.

And it’s working. “In six years, we’ve gone from under 15 employees to, at the end of this year, somewhere between 150 and 200,” Patwin says. “And we’ve grown 30x in our revenue.”

The pandemic increases demand for chartered flights

“We offer regular charter if you just wanted to rent a jet one time and go to Las Vegas or Scottsdale for the weekend,” says Cory Bengtzen, founder and CEO of CB SkyShare. “Or, we have the jet sharing program where you co-own one of the airplanes and then you have access to the entire fleet. We also service people who want to own their own airplane through our brokerage.”

Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Bengtzen spent 15 years in the auto industry, working his way up at a Ford dealership in Provo before opening two used car dealerships and owning his own bank. But Bengtzen always had a passion for aviation. After obtaining his pilot’s license and buying his first plane when he was 22 years old, he spent years flying whenever he could spare time―until the Great Recession hit.

Photography provided by SkyShare

“2009 came, and the car business was definitely not doing as well as it had in the years past,” he says. “I decided to sell the car dealership and just follow my passion for aviation. Back then, it was called CB Aviation, and our main, core focus was just buying and selling airplanes: basically [we were] a real estate agent, but our houses had wings, and they were all over the world.”

In April and May of 2020, SkyShare’s entire fleet was grounded while the world faced the first of many lockdowns. Luckily, the company had done well enough in prior years to pull through―and Q4 of 2020 ended up being the best quarter it ever had. “Even with the devastating second quarter, we were able to recoup and end up about 24 percent higher in 2020 than we were in 2019 in overall revenue,” Bengtzen says. “And so, I believe that the industry is shifting a little bit.”

The pandemic forced companies across the world to change their mode of operation. The number of flights has been greatly reduced, making scheduling difficult, and TSA regulations have increased, making the check-in process much more arduous. Plus, the potential of picking up the virus is high: when it comes to commercial air travel, there’s no way to avoid coming into contact with hundreds of people.

“[The pandemic has] pushed a whole new wave of people that had the means before to fly private but they couldn’t justify it, and now they’ve reached out to us,” Bengtzen says. To date, more individuals have been exploring plane chartering and participating in the jet sharing program than ever before.

Executive teams start holding meetings at 38,000 feet

As a result, a new phenomenon occurred: an increasing number of executives began using SkyShare’s private planes as a boardroom in the sky.

According to Bengtzen, owners of one of Utah’s most prestigious construction companies started using SkyShare during the pandemic, remarking how efficient the experience was for the team. In one day, they were able to travel to three different clients in three different cities―and prep for and debrief each meeting during the flight.

“To do the same three cities,” Bengtzen says, “it would take three to four days if they had to either drive it or do the commercial airlines, and yet, they’re having all their executives home by dinner the same night by using the boardroom in the sky.”

Photography provided by SkyShare

Plus by flying private, passengers can avoid exposure to COVID-19 by driving right up to a sanitized, private plane, and eschewing TSA entirely.

“I’m a true believer that private aviation can help grow many different companies just by the efficiencies that it gives, and there have been so many people that believe that they can never afford to do it,” he says. “And so our company goal is really to find different ways to bring the option of flying private―and make it more affordable―[to] more people so they can use the benefits.”

While Bengtzen believes that private travel will never fully replace commercial air, it definitely offers an uncontested level of safety, efficiency, and flexibility. “I do believe that what’s happened in the last year and everything moving forward, that the private sector, the private aviation side, is going to grow tremendously compared to the airlines,” Bengtzen says. “Once you start flying private, you’ll never want to go back.”

Giving back to the community

“[Cory] doesn’t have the luxury of coming from a network of people with tons of VC connections,” says Patwin when discussing the company’s evolution. SkyShare wasn’t born by pitching a concept to investors and then testing that concept with millions of dollars in the bank. Bengtzen had to bootstrap it.

“This company has to earn money every year to continue to exist and grow,” Patwin says. “This isn’t an ephemeral, non-tangible, pie-in-the-sky, ‘Hey! Let’s create something!’ This is, ‘Not only am I going to do this, but I have to make it work right away so I can grow it.’ I think that that’s what’s really impressive about our growth… it’s purely organic.”

But it wasn’t all about the high-dollar clientele. Bengtzen also wanted to create something that would help those in need.

“We partnered up with Angel Flight West, which is a really neat organization, and it’s full of aircraft owners and pilots that donate their time, and donate their plane [to patients in dire need of medical care],” Bengtzen says. He himself has flown a cancer patient along with the patient’s family to seek treatment at a proper facility that was located hours away from the patient’s home. “They would [otherwise] have to drive, and [that’s] such a horrible travel experience.”

Photography provided by SkyShare

In addition to fundraising for Angel Flight West and urging their clients to donate flights, SkyShare has been instrumental in delivering medical supplies to help stop the spread of COVID and has even conducted a special rescue mission: they were able to pick up six children from a devastating home life and safely fly them to their grandparents.

“I don’t think our philanthropy is just limited to [Angel Flights West],” Patwin adds. For example, one of SkyShare’s potential clients “had an emergency where one of his family members [was] all of a sudden [at] death’s door.” Bengtzen made the call to ensure that the potential client was flown private to see his family member immediately.

With its charitable efforts and dedication to the customer experience, it’s clear that CB SkyShare is more than just building an innovative brand: it’s redefining luxury travel as a whole.

“We’re graduating more and more into an experience marketplace where the luxury isn’t so much how it looks or what it’s made of; it’s sort of how it makes you feel,” Patwin says. “So I think if we’re going to define luxury as that, then I’m all about being a brand that’s centered in that.”

Everything is in its place, every interior design detail is thought through to the nth degree. And even though there are at least 40 acres separating you from your neighbors, you still have everything you could ever want at your disposal: golf courses designed by the best in the industry, access to watersports on lakes nestled between peaks at an altitude of 7,000 feet, horseback riding through pristine trails, and a community of some of the most successful individuals on the planet who are happy to discuss world-changing ideas over dinner prepared by a private chef.

Is it utopia? Close. Drop the last five letters and replace them with an A and an H.

Utah’s exclusive, ultra-affluent communities are on the rise. And as a result of the pandemic, they’re growing rapidly―so much so that they’re becoming more and more tight-lipped in an effort to preserve their exclusive, members-only feel. Wasatch Peak, for one, is a new, super secret community in the works that won’t publicly disclose any information or even make mention that they exist; but that doesn’t keep them from selling homes upwards of $20 million to invite-only initiates.

Promontory photographed by Doug Burke

Promontory: the country club on steroids

Since the start of the pandemic, Promontory―Utah’s most luxurious vacation home community in Park City―has seen its total sales skyrocket. To be exact, they’ve gone from $214 million in 2019 to $490 million this year. When I spoke with Kelli Brown, Promontory’s general manager, it became clear that there are certain aspects of the community that make it one of the most desirable places to live in the country―especially now.

First and foremost, Promontory’s amenities are a huge contributing factor when it comes to its recent boom in growth. “I don’t know of any other club that offers as many amenities as Promontory,” Brown says. “Sometimes we joke that it’s a country club on steroids because our developers really tried to think of everything you [could] conceivably want to do at a country club and make sure every member of your family has something to do every season of the year.

“We have two signature golf courses: one designed by Pete Dye and one designed by Jack Nicklaus. Both of those facilities have their own dedicated golf clubhouse buildings. We have an equestrian center that’s just state-of-the-art―absolutely gorgeous. We have tennis, fitness centers, a spa, multiple pools, [and] a beach club―there’s really no other place I know that has a beach club at 7,000 feet.”

In addition to the altitude, the beach club is particularly unique because it includes a huge, stunning, negative-edge pool that flows out into a lake peppered with paddleboarders. After a day at the beach, families flock to The Shed: a clubhouse that includes a bowling alley, a movie theater, basketball courts, air hockey, and shuffleboard. Community members can choose from among five different restaurants to dine in, and when it’s time to ski, they can utilize two members-only ski lodges: one at the base of Park City Mountain Resort and one at the base of Deer Valley Resort.

“I think the driver during COVID is the ability to live a very robust, active lifestyle and not feel like you’re on top of other people,” Brown says. In addition to all-time high home sales, Promontory has seen its golf rounds go up by 30 percent and has also witnessed a boost in the use of its outdoor tennis and trails. “It’s actually been the busiest year we’ve ever seen at Promontory in the 20 years that it’s been in existence,” she tells me.

When I ask Brown to elaborate more on why more individuals have been arriving from the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Texas, she answers that the ability to work remotely has also contributed to the influx of new community members. As people realize that they can work from anywhere, they decidedly want to work from one of the top communities on earth.

“I think that the biggest reason people move to Promontory is that they can live the kind of lifestyle that they want to live and do it in fresh air and in a community of like-minded, affluent people. It’s a very, very high-end community.”

Promontory’s least expensive home is valued at $1.6 million―which, according to Brown, will give you a very small product―while its most expensive homes are valued at $12 million. For access to amenities, the community requires either a full membership or social membership, with full membership fees priced at $150,000. Payment, of course, can only come after a pretty serious vetting process that includes a background check and letters of recommendation.

While there is no one way to describe a Promontory community member, Brown says that there are a few underlying commonalities: members are “family loving, very successful in life, [and] value their freedoms and ability to do what they want to do. They are people who have been very, very successful. We have captains of industries here and people who hold very prominent positions in Fortune 500 Companies. And we of course have some celebrities.”

Even though Brown could not disclose the names of her most prominent community members, she said that Promontory is particularly unique because it establishes a sense of legacy: “I think when you’re in a community like this where there’s something for all of your family members to do, you inherently get people that want to bring their family here and want this to be a legacy club for future generations,” she concludes.

Sanctuary: the invite-only community for visionaries

Tucked away in the Wasatch mountains is one of the planet’s most well-kept secrets. To find it, you’ll have to look for a secluded neighborhood hidden among three ski resorts, the Pineview Reservoir lake, and the Monte Cristo Range’s wide-open backcountry. This is Sanctuary―the aptly named community designed for those who cherish the gorgeous, natural environment so much so that by living here, they actively participate as stewards of the wild world they inhabit.

“We are in an incredible environment which can never be changed or altered with [development],” says Tim Charlwood, Sanctuary’s founding visionary and owner. “We’ve put 89 percent of the land into a conservation trust so that people can’t spoil it.”

But Sanctuary’s sustainability efforts don’t stop there. “Every home has geothermic energy―which is a very big deal― and all the waste systems are zero contamination,” Charlwood says before telling me that this waste management project took a year-and-a-half to get approved and established through the Utah Division of Water Rights. “We’re doing all the right things environmentally, and we have something that we’re preserving and looking after.”

Charlwood, a UK transplant, has decades of experience building utopian communities. As a founding member of Mustique Island in the Caribbean―a private island for high-net-worth individuals―and multiple ultra-affluent developments in Europe, he is uniquely qualified to create a state-of-the-art neighborhood focused on enlightenment.

“We have the vision. It has always been about bringing the corporate and the high executive world together to have their special times together,” he says. “It’s about the experience that we can generate for them. The real estate is obviously important, but it is secondary to the experience that we promote.”

Charlwood knows that these powerful individuals want to end their days with “a really good chef and a really good evening together. They’re all executive leaders of the world and they have very private times together―that’s their inspirational time and their creative time amongst the business world.”

Sanctuary’s ability to unite top individuals is something that has naturally led to unique, intellectual gatherings for community members. Whether the conversations are tiny get-togethers or events led by leaders of the Silicon Slopes, they are designed to stoke innovation and creativity for all who are lucky enough to attend.

And according to Charlwood, the community is invitation-only: “We invite people to invite their friends so that we are a community of people that all understand and know each other. It’s important that we have an invitation process. It’s so cool to see that community. They look forward to coming to their home and meeting their friends and having community time together, but with every exciting recreation that you could imagine.”

Charlwood is referring to heli-skiing, backcountry snowmobiling, wake boating, and jet skiing―activities that are known at Sanctuary as “high-altitude recreation.” As a matter of fact, Sanctuary is, according to Charlton, the only private community in North America where heli-skiing is offered. Additionally, it has its own Olympic-designed Nordic trails and over 12,000 acres of open-space land that community members can access.

Each home is built on 40 acres of private land, lending a level of privacy that is unparalleled when compared to any other community in the state. Plus, the community’s architecture, by James Carroll, is designed specifically to stand the test of time and meld with the beauty of the natural environment. Charlwood tells me that there is tremendous “purpose and meaning for everything in [each] home,” and his wife, Michaelle Peters, a brilliant artist and interior designer, curates the spaces to perfection.

“Leaders consistently say it’s the best home that they’ve ever seen in Utah―even the world,” he says. “We’ve had a number of big leaders come to us and they never leave. That’s the biggest thing that’s been extraordinary.”

It makes sense: Sanctuary’s landscape is nothing short of breath-taking. The sense of ownership, stewardship, and vision that each member has access to acts as a breeding ground for uncanny inspiration and world-changing ideas. “You come to the Sanctuary and it’s mind-blowing in terms of visuals,” Charlwood says. “Looking at your own mountain is a story in itself.”

Promontory photographed by Doug Burke

Summit Powder Mountain: where authenticity is the new currency

When I speak to Summit Powder Mountain’s director of real estate, Brian Williams, he immediately tells me what makes the community so unique: “One of the first things that sets us apart is the view corridor,” he says. “When we’re building at 9,000 feet (on average) on a ridgeline, virtually every homesite we offer has these panoramic views from the sunrise over the Uintas all the way to the sunset over the Great Salt Lake and north clear out to Cache Valley. From an aesthetic standpoint, I don’t know anywhere else in the United States that has these drastic vista views.”

That gorgeous, expansive gaze is certainly something that makes the homes at Summit Powder Mountain unlike anywhere else in existence. However, the view corridors are just a small feature of the community’s signature architecture. The style is something Williams calls “heritage modern,” and it refers to the fact that “we want our homes to be the shape of a modern home, we want them to use the most high-tech materials they can from a sustainability perspective, but then we want to clad their exterior with natural materials to make them look like they’ve been there forever.”

This is where the community gets the “heritage” side of “modern,” and Williams says that here, “You won’t find the typical heavy ‘timber and lodge’ look that exists in most mountain communities.”

In addition to its spectacular architecture, Summit Powder Mountain is also dedicated to adhering to strict design guidelines. Each home is skin-in, ski-out, and is built within 30 feet of the roadways. Winding driveways and extended rock walls are strictly prohibited in an attempt to preserve the natural beauty of the mountain. Summit Powder Mountain also limits the number of homes that can be built so that the community’s impact on the mountain is low.

“You basically have this very defined pie and if you want a slice of it, you do pay a premium,” Williams says.

However, it’s not just the way that Summit Powder Mountain is built that sets it apart. Williams explains that, while the community is pricey, ostentatious displays of wealth are not encouraged on the mountain. When it comes to building inside the neighborhood, community members are urged to build homes that are modern and stately but still softened by natural materials that blend in with the surrounding environment.

In fact, authenticity is a major factor that defines the community as a whole. While these members are highly successful people in their everyday lives―people who bring in tremendous wealth and who are often seen in a suit and tie―they are invited to leave that all behind and lean into their truest selves.

“When they come to Powder Mountain, it is culturally acceptable to let your hair down, shed that suit, and put on some comfy clothes,” Williams says. “You may have all the means in the world, but at the same token, Summit Powder Mountain is a place where your sweats and slippers walking around the lodge are just as acceptable as anything else. What we find from that is people get back to their more authentic selves when they’re not having to wear that “suit”―a word he uses not to only describe a literal suit, but to describe a disguise that these highly successful individuals use to delineate their social status.

“Here, our social circles are ‘come here and relax,’ ‘reconnect with your own soul,’ ‘connect with mother nature,’ ‘connect with the beauty that’s around us,’ ‘connect with your neighbors,’ [and] ‘spend more time asking questions about other people and less time talking about yourself’” he says. “That’s the culture of Summit Powder Mountain, and no pun intended, it’s a breath of fresh air.”

That sense of authenticity that’s so lauded at Summit Powder Mountain is certainly something that makes the community so extraordinary, and it’s certainly something that Williams intends to maintain. When newcomers come for a tour, he likes to set the tone right away and let them know that Summit Powder Mountain is first and foremost about driving purpose in its community through meaningful connections.

“We would like all of the people who live on the mountain―whether they’re full-time or part-time―to know each other and like each other and communicate on a regular basis and then gather together and brainstorm ideas for how to make the world a better place,” he says. “Summit Powder Mountain definitely separates itself by being a place where being real and authentic is the preferred behavior.”

Luckily, Horne had a side hustle―a jewelry line that she’d been working on with her childhood friend, Keeley Wilson. “I felt so fortunate to have our little side business―Onyx and Ash―because I’d just lost my job and then COVID-19 hit, so finding a job elsewhere would have been super stressful,” she says.

In fact, Onyx and Ash’s revenue doubled in 2020, making Horne’s side hustle more valuable than her day job ever was. As it turns out, having multiple revenue streams can mean the difference between survival and destitution―especially during a downturn―but most people don’t know where to start.

Enter Subvia: a new app designed to redefine hyperlocal commerce―opportunities to buy, sell, and connect with products and services right on your own neighborhood block. After speaking with both founders, Andrew Krueger, CEO, and Matt Moody, CTO, it became clear that Subvia’s mission is more than about building a new platform: it’s about giving people an opportunity to turn their passion into a profession. 

The market for homemade, hyperlocal products is growing

The very foundation of Subvia is rooted in small, community-driven interactions. During the pandemic, Krueger and Moody―who are close friends and neighbors―had a chance to connect deeply with each other to discuss what a post-pandemic economy would look like. With more time on their hands than usual, they asked themselves where economic trends were heading, and what work people would look for in the future. 

Inspired by their wives’ inclination to shop for artisanal goods and services from hyperlocal platforms such as Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, and Next Door―they found themselves on the precipice of something totally novel.

“Our neighborhood has a pretty vibrant local commerce scene,” Krueger explains. “There’s a community of people providing services for each other, whether that’s a neighborhood kid or an adult in the neighborhood who has talent or people buying and selling [artisanal] goods and foods.”

That observation was something that led Krueger and Moody to a very distinct problem: individuals often want to support small businesses or side hustles in their local communities, but they don’t realize that those talents and skills are available to them because there’s no centralized platform for hyperlocal commerce. 

“People often turn to a more expensive chain or some larger business when they’d rather get service from someone right in their area―they just don’t know it’s available,” Krueger says. 

Subvia’s mission is to shine a light on hyperlocal goods and services that would otherwise be difficult to find. When you download the app, you’re immediately presented with the opportunity to discover commerce opportunities in your local community. As soon as you start scrolling, you’ll see suggestions from your friend network and your geographic location.

When it comes to attracting sellers, Subvia will have to consider some big competition―namely, Etsy. “Subvia is focused on creating recurring income for sellers,” Krueger tells me. “If you’re on Etsy, you don’t get subscribers. A great way to think about it is Etsy is this great global crafts marketplace, but you can’t get your hair cut on Etsy, and you definitely can’t form a relationship with someone to come provide you with a good or service that’s recurring, where you can say, ‘Look, I need you to come mow my lawn every week, I need you to cut my hair every month, I need you to bring me a batch of cookies every fourteen days.’ That’s a big differentiator.” 

According to Krueger, none of Subvia’s competitors are hyperlocal or community-focused. They eschew networks designed to support micropreneurs and instead focus on one-off sales of goods instead of continual purchases of both goods and services. Subvia is betting on the power of community―on relationships that drive subscription sales. 

After all, if Krueger and Moody’s local community was enough to inspire them to build a new platform, then perhaps Subvia’s ability to enhance communal interactions will lead to even more innovation for others in the future. 

Apps enable creators to sell their products to small communities

Moody argues that Subvia is not just about connecting people within their own communities, it’s also about giving people total ownership over their income. “If we’ve learned anything here over the last 10 months,” he tells me, “[it’s] that stability is really critical to people.”

That observation pushed the founders to build a platform that would not only allow people to start their side hustles, it’s also aimed at helping them grow their side hustles and truly turn them into primary sources of income. Moody explains it like this: “I have a body, [so] I’m capable of providing a service of sorts. Let’s just say [you’re] really great at lawn-mowing or if you live in a wintery area, [you] can shovel snow. The service industry is booming and budding with opportunities of this nature.”

Chase Saxton, senior enterprise account executive at Adobe brings up another valid point: having a side hustle can help employees develop a sense of personal ownership when it comes to performing in their day jobs. “I’m such a huge advocate for side hustles,” he says. “Even if it never grows into something huge, it teaches such foundational principles because the mindset of an owner is completely different than that of an employee, if you have an employee who can have that mindset of an owner, it only makes a more effective employee.”

Saxton’s own side hustle is called Develop Bright. What began as a college project is now a digital agency that maintains over 170 customers per month and has a very unique focus: buying portions of different companies and then helping them grow digitally. Even though Develop Bright is focused on companies in the service industry, Saxton says that it helps inform the work he does at his full-time job by giving him a more insightful perspective when it comes to conducting enterprise sales.

On top of helping him understand marketing, finance, and operations more deeply, Develop Bright has helped Saxton communicate more emphatically with clients: “You’re not just trying to pitch them something; you’re not just trying to tell them why Adobe’s great,” he says. “You’re able to say, ‘Hey, listen. I get it: there are multiple business units impacted by this decision.’” It’s this ownership mindset that allows Saxton to truly excel.

Whether that sense of ownership comes from performing at an executive level or from financial freedom, having a side hustle can certainly add to your everyday life in a major way. “People want to be able to provide their own stability. That’s the most important thing we’ve learned over the last 10 months,” Moody affirms.

“I wish every single person in America would start a side hustle because I think the world would be a little bit [of] a better place,” Saxton says. “It would motivate every other company to be a little bit more competitive.”

Micropreneurship can give corporate employees a creative outlet

When I ask Saxton why he doesn’t leave Adobe to pursue his side hustle full-time, he explains that he loves the opportunity to be creative on his own time without bringing about any serious financial risk. He also thinks the work he does both at Adobe and at his own business helps to enrich his experience overall.

“Adobe is one of the best companies out there. Nothing I do [with my side hustle] conflicts with Adobe. They’ve been really great to help me find that creativity and passion,” he says. “Creativity keeps the mind busy which makes it so you can’t think ill thoughts, as funny as that sounds. [That’s] super pivotal in my mind.” ”

“We live in a very stressful time right now,” adds Val Hale, executive director at Utah Governor’s Office of economic development. For the past several years, Hale has been selling his wood carvings on Etsy to satisfy his creative side. “[Having] something at home that you can do instead of just sitting around and [watching] TV really helps your mental health.”

Hale carves everything from jewelry boxes to personalized figurines that serve as sought-after holiday gifts. “I have a whole variety of things I love creating. I’m a creative person to begin with,” he tells me. “I need to be creating and doing things.”

“My biggest advice would be to just start,” Horne says emphatically. “It’s so easy to be like, ‘Oh, well, what if we get too many orders in and don’t have enough inventory? Or what about this and what about this?’ You can run yourself into the ground and kill your own dream before you even get started worrying about all the what-ifs. Just start somewhere.”

Miller has placed countless executives in different companies across the state, but “there are still quite a few unemployed people,” he says. “And there are fewer jobs. So your ability to jump around at your convenience right now is dramatically less than it used to be.”

With more applicants and fewer jobs, the recruiting dynamic has shifted. “A year ago in Utah, you were constantly trying to find people who were interested in your roles,” he says. “Now, the odds of being able to find a larger candidate pool is dramatically higher. So, finding people is less of the issue today but [it highlights] a very different problem.”

That problem? The hiring process itself. “Because there are so many applicants, and companies had such a hard time finding them before, they have overloaded the process they designed a year ago, and it’s creating a poor candidate experience,” Miller says.

The end result, he says, is an underpaid, underqualified team that just needs to be replaced down the line.

Too many candidates, not enough jobs

Trying to find a job is like trying to buy a house right now. There’s a flood of people, and not enough inventory to accommodate all of them. As a result, employers, like home sellers, are holding all the cards.

With few positions to fill and plenty of candidates to select from, ghosting―when recruiters fail to tell candidates whether they are rejected or accepted for the role―has hit an all-time high. Driven by the company’s inability to define what role they are looking for beforehand, Miller says.

“To this day, I walk into companies, even at an executive level, and the two different peers and the CEO completely describe an entirely different person and skill set that they need for this position,” he says. “You can tell they’ve never sat down as a group and hammered out a true blue scorecard.”

If a candidate does make it to the final round, chances are they won’t get the salary they are looking for. Employers know they can get a higher level of talent for less money, and they’re taking advantage of that. Though underpaying talent may save a company some dollars up front, it can also cost the company money down the line.

“In six months, when the things start balancing out a little bit and that individual knows their worth… all of a sudden, all the effort they put into ramping that person up is out the door when they go find something very easily for a lot more money,” Miller says.

It’s better for a company in the long run, Miller says, to build a solid team from the get-go. Get the executive team together, make a list of the people abilities and skillsets that company needs, and then hire and pay well for those positions, knowing they will be part of building the company from the ground up.

And if the budget is still tight: “My advice to employers is to hire less, but treat them like you would have treated them a year ago,” Miller says. “It’s better than underpaying and overhiring and losing everybody in six months.”

Too many candidates, no way to hire them

To make matters worse, sometimes the talent that companies need exists, but isn’t available to them.

“It drives me nuts that we have this incredible talent shortage in every state, every metropolitan area, including Utah, where we’re struggling to find talent and we’re struggling to recruit talent from outside of the state,” says Bassam Salem, CEO at AtlasRTX, “Yet, we have this world-class university that is pumping out incredible international students, all of whom are looking for jobs, some of whom have masters or PhDs in computer science and can code anything, and I can’t go and recruit from them.”

Salem was born in Egypt and came to the US as a teenager by way of France and England. After achieving his BS, MS, and MPhil degrees in computer science as well as an MBA, Salem worked in consulting and technology before turning to entrepreneurship. Salem’s own experience is something he often thinks about when it comes to hiring and why he is unable to onboard someone who underwent a situation similar to his own.

“Our immigration laws make it so difficult for a company―especially a small one like mine―to be able to sponsor a foreign student [and] give them a Visa here,” he says. “In the 90s, when I did it, it was hard, but not crazy hard. Now, in 2020, it’s so difficult to get a foreign student a Visa.”

While immigration laws are federal laws and are not unique to Utah, Salem’s experience sheds light on another recruitment issue that is often overlooked: if the cost of sponsoring excellent foreign candidates are too much for young startups to support, then how can these startups get the very best of the best when it comes to talent?

“We educate an incredible number of foreign students every year―larger than any other country in the world by an order of magnitude―and then we force them to go home because their Visas expire after they’re done with their school.”

Salem says that the sheer amount of brilliant candidates who are forced to go back to their home countries “is painful and staggering.”

“I wish more people were aware of [this fact] because I believe we build a great country by attracting the best talent in the world, by making it so those who want to come here and work hard and help us build the economy can and do stay here,” Salem says.

Founded in 2017, Bungalow provides a Airbnb-esque approach to finding an apartment and roommate. Initially designed to solve a very Bay Area problem, the platform has since scaled to include 850 homeowners and 3,500 residents as current users―and when they did, they opened a second office in downtown Salt Lake City. 

“We were drawn to [Utah] based on quality of talent and proximity to SF,” Collins says. “We did significant research when determining where we wanted to open our next HQ and found that Utah was a perfect fit. Culturally, there is amazing talent across the greater Salt Lake and Silicon Slopes regions, while it is also extremely accessible from all over the US. We’ve been thrilled by the team so far and are excited to continue to expand our footprint here.”

Like Bungalow, a multitude of Bay Area startups are now laying claim to the Silicon Slopes. Collins notes that this has to do with the fact that Utah has “a great talent base with strong universities, a very driven and friendly culture, [an] accessible location, beautiful [landscapes], and a cost of living that is significantly less than cities such as SF.”

Utah is a hub of marketing and sales talent

Austin Miller, CEO of IsoTalent says he knows several companies who are splitting their time between California and Utah. He thinks that while the Bay Area’s tenure in tech has created a concentration of talented engineers, Utah has an abundance of quality salespeople. “[Silicon Valley] has a really strong balance to the areas we’re limited in,” Miller says. “Utah has this uniqueness that brings a really strong sales and marketing perspective.”

Jordan Staples agrees. As head of direct sales for Paystand, he tells me Utah has “the type of talent that it takes to sell,market, implement and support.” These skills are highly sought after by rapidly growing startups, and Utah is understood to be a reliable source for that talent. “While talent and diversity are important, acumen is also important,” adds Mark Fisher, Paystand’s VP of marketing. “As a fintech, we want to tap into that community.”

The state’s predominant religion could have something to do with that. An estimated one-third of Utah’s workforce spent two years of their youth as door-to-door salesmen―and they go on to join a vast community of like-minded individuals once they return home. It’s no wonder we’ve developed something of a knack for sales and a penchant for marketing.

“One of the things that makes [Silicon Valley] so powerful is the strength of its network of talent and capital,” says Collins. “Given an increasing number of highly successful companies launching, growing, and succeeding in Utah, I believe many of these same network effects will only strengthen here over time as well.”

Utah adds diversity of thought to Silicon Valley companies

Degreed, an ed-tech company focused on providing employees with unparalleled skill development, took a different approach to establishing office locations. Jonathan Munk, the company’s head of corporate development strategy, says the company was founded by two individuals: one who was based in the Bay Area (but who had roots in Utah) and the other who lived in the Salt Lake Valley.

Early on, the company decided to co-locate their headquarters with product, engineering, and brand teams in Utah; and finance, sales operations, and all the other functions based in northern California. Though Munk admits there are advantages to the cost-effective nature of Utah talent and the geographical needs of their business, what he most appreciates about the two locations is diversity of thought.

“We fundamentally believe that the brand you create and the products you create and how well you speak to the market is directly affected by the people that you bring inside the building,” Munk says. Individuals that come from a variety of backgrounds allow Degreed to more effectively comprehend and incorporate diverse perspectives―and therefore, more effectively understand a wider range of consumers.

“If you have a lack of diversity in that candidate pool or a lack of backgrounds and interests, then you are limiting who you are going to be able to speak to,” Munk says. “You are limiting who you’re going to build your products for. You are limiting how well you can tell your story to those audiences.”

By having locations in Silicon Valley and in the Salt Lake Valley, Degreed is able to pull from both of its office cultures in a way that works to its advantage. These multiple perspectives inform one another and are subsequently translated into a unique user experience for Degreed’s customers. “Core to our own mission is we are only as good as the diversity of opinions and expertise and backgrounds that are represented within the company,” Munk says.

Fisher agrees. “We want good people with diversity of perspectives that bring good talent to the company,” he says. “Places like the Silicon Slopes where we can find that population [are] super important.”

The Utah lifestyle is a benefit to organizations

“It’s not this vicious dog-eat-dog place,” Staples says of the state. “We’re definitely competitive, and that’s what’s driven so much growth, but [it’s] really a community of collaboration.”

A less-discussed aspect of Utah’s lifestyle is that, unlike the Bay Area, Utah doesn’t have the long commutes, the expensive lifestyle, or the inaccessibility of nature. Instead, we have an ease of life, a family-first mentality, and a love of the great outdoors.

“What we want to do is encourage our employees to be in locations that allow them to get those recharge opportunities,” Fisher says. “If they’re always in front of their computer, if they’re always in traffic, they don’t get time to step back, zoom out, look at problems, and bring new perspectives to [them]. It does play a part and it actually makes a difference in terms of long-term health and sustainability of a company. It’s really key for how we think about building a really healthy organization.”

The notion that disconnection contributes to company viability seems to be deeply understood by Bungalow as well. Torrance’s team works on a bifurcated schedule: half of the team works Sunday to Wednesday and the other half of the team works Wednesday to Saturday. That way, they effectively maximize time while minimizing burnout. “The idea of always being ‘on’ as a company, but finding the balance for our team,” Torrance says, is incredibly important to Bungalow. “Being in Utah allows our team to disconnect.”

“The ability to get out, the ability to have great work-life balance, the ability to work in a beautiful place, that impacts [and] influences employees,” Staples adds. As head of sales, Staples thinks constantly about customer satisfaction. He’s noticed that employees who have the opportunity to connect deeply with the world around them are also able to connect more deeply with customers. As a result, profitability increases.

Evidently, Utah’s communal and lifestyle opportunities are huge factors when it comes to making the decision to expand from the Bay. And, it’s apparent that these factors are incredibly important when it comes to boosting both productivity and sales.

Utah has a low cost-of-business

Scaling is the most crucial element of any entrepreneurial venture. So, how does having more than one headquarters contribute to a company’s ability to effectively scale?

“I do believe that the cost-of-living equation and the value to the business of having a large-scale team based here in Utah is critical to us solving our long term profitability, and thus, our ultimate success,” Torrance says. “I don’t believe we would be able to grow or scale as effectively if we were based solely in California.”

Similarly, Fisher tells me that, when facing “the absolute glut of technology firms and the outsized competition for talent” in California, Paystand had no choice but to implement a novel strategy. “We still had to find the best people, but we had to be a little bit more diverse in our perspective,” he says.

Paystand sought out talent from Guadalajara at an early stage of growth in an attempt to find new talent, solutions, and points of view. “We started small in the Mexico expansion and now it has several different departments representing Paystand,” Staples says. “We want to do the same thing in Utah―starting with sales and business development.”

Paystand expects its expansion into Utah to mirror its previous success and add even more: as the ninth fastest-growing, privately held company in Silicon Valley, Paystand may outgrow its new Utah office in just a few weeks.

When I ask Fisher if he has any advice for companies looking to come to the Silicon Slopes, he replies with a fervent suggestion: entrepreneurs should take a step back and fully evaluate their expansion strategies both on a business and a cultural level. “Utah is a phenomenal opportunity for the right reasons,” he says. “You have to understand how to make cultures work between offices. So, understand why you’re doing it and what the key drivers are. And if you do, then you can make the right decision. For us, Utah was a no brainer.”

“If you don’t know about Utah, if you don’t know about the Utah tech scene, take a deep look,” Staples says. “Take a look at that spirit of entrepreneurship and what has taken place. There [are] incredible things happening. And if you don’t know about the tech scene, come experience it.”

Utah’s track record for its incredible community, talent, and drive―combined with its many recent examples of startup growth and acquisition―is becoming more well known. We may start to see a lot more Silicon Valley-based startups with a satellite location in Utah, and as a result, companies that play both sides of the game may inevitably win it all.

For the first time in history, we have the ability to peek inside the homes of those we work with; not only is telepresence technology a way to ensure we’re still able to work in teams during these unprecedented times, but it also functions as a portal into the personal lives of the people we’ve only previously known under strictly professional circumstances.

This phenomenon begs a simple question: how much can we learn from looking in?

The CTO who hunts buck from his front porch

Austin Miller, CEO of executive recruitment firm IsoTalent, works with some of the top executives in the country on a daily basis. As a recruiter, he’s always engaging with some of the most talented individuals in their fields, and now, through Zoom, he’s been able to get a deeper look into their lives.

“I was speaking with a CTO who lives in Wanship,” Miller says. “As I was speaking, he kind of got distracted and looked and in the background was this big open window and just a beautiful mountain range. What he was distracted by was an elk walking across his front lawn,”

The CTO went on to tell Miller that he often hunts buck from his front porch and that he is able to split his time managing software engineering developments for his company and enjoying the spoils of the natural landscape he’s surrounded by. “It was actually really unique to me, because it wasn’t what I stereotypically think of [in terms of] a CTO,” Miller says. “I think it really made me realize that there are a lot of people we don’t really know or understand, and being on Zoom calls like that, all of a sudden you [get] to open up topics, and thoughts, and ideas, and ask questions that you never would have thought to ask prior to seeing that background or seeing that different type of setting.”

“Seeing the excellence imbued within the workspace draws a parallel to the excellence that Hale displays through his work on a daily basis.

From this meeting, Miller was able to learn more about this individual than he would have been able to under any other circumstance: “He likes solitude [and] he likes the outdoors. And it actually explained a lot about how to work with him [and] how to talk to him and again, I would have never thought to ask those questions until that background of that Zoom [meeting] was there.”

What Miller discovered was a deeper level of human connection: through a remote meeting, he was able to acquire a true understanding of someone that he would not have been able to glean in any other way.

The executive director harboring a hidden talent

Tony Young, media relations manager at the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development has adjusted effortlessly to working from home. As a father to a new baby, he’s been able to give his family the time they need while still showing up for his job at GOED under Val Hale, the executive director.

“I think in our line of work as a government agency and especially part of the government office… you think of your bosses and the directors as not real people in a way, right?” Young says. “Because you always see them in a suit, in a tie, and nicely dressed, and very professional. I’ve actually loved these Zoom meetings where you can see their real personality come out. They’re in t-shirts. They’re a little bit more relaxed. It’s been cool for me to see that different perspective.”

What really showed Young a deeper look into Hale’s personality was his woodworking facility. During one of their most recent Zoom meetings, Hale opted to host the meeting on his end among his carpentry projects. While Young and many others have known that Hale is a skilled carpenter―he’s repeatedly handmade beehive-style boxes to hand out to awardees at the Utah Economic Summit―this was the first time Young got an inside look into Hale’s process.

“I’ve never seen a picture of his actual workspace,” Young says, and the Zoom meeting revealed Hale’s penchant for perfection: the organization of his space and materials was immaculate. In the same way that he operates as an executive director, Hale commits a high level of authentic dedication to his craftsmanship.

“He takes his time with stuff,” Young confirms. “He doesn’t rush it. It’s a thorough job, and I think that kind of showed with his workspace. He explains that seeing the excellence imbued within the workspace draws a parallel to the excellence that Hale displays through his work on a daily basis. “When it comes to woodworking, it’s all about perfection, and Val will tell you… ‘Oh, it’s not perfect, but I tried!’ But it’s pretty close to perfect.”

The CMO with a penchant for antique weaponry

Austin Stewart, an enterprise account executive at Motivosity, recounts a remote office event his company hosted: Motivosity Cribs. Through Motivosity’s own unique take on an MTV classic, executives from around the country were invited to give virtual tours of their homes, giving team members an inside look into where and how they live.

“Our CMO, Joe [Staples]… collects knives. I didn’t know that he was a knife collector,” Stewart says.

Staples has embarked on many travels throughout his career and uses his knife collection as a way to remember the places he’s been to. Through Zoom, Staples was able to showcase a souvenir knife from each locale; Motivosity Cribs was also able to highlight the fact that Staples’s brother-in-law built him his very own knife display cabinet for his collection of some 60 or 70 knives.

“He also had a Gatling gun in his house,” Stewart tells me.

“Miller discovered was a deeper level of human connection: through a remote meeting, he was able to acquire a true understanding of someone that he would not have been able to glean in any other way.

When I ask Staples about his Gatling gun, he explains: “This one’s more of a craftsman piece of art. It shoots .22s, it’s made out of walnut brass and steel for the barrels, but the mechanism’s the same… it has a crank handle, and has a number of barrels that rotate through. Frankly, we’ve only shot it once. So, that tells you that we use it much more as a decorative piece than something to go out and actually use to shoot. But it really is beautiful. Showing that over Zoom―that was the thing that stood out to people,” Staples says.

When I ask Stewart what this experience revealed about Staples’ character, he explains that it showed Staples’ love of all things wild and electrifying. “It just kind of confirmed [that] he’s adventurous, and it’s funny because you wouldn’t picture him that way,” Stewart muses. In fact, Stewart didn’t know that Staples had also gone on many survivalist trips, but says that his collection of antique weaponry is a testament to his inherent fascination with daring ventures.

The VP of sales who collects all things Japanese

Motivosity Cribs also revealed that Brad Jensen, Motivosity’s VP of sales, has a passion for Japanese art and design.

Jensen and his family have “a huge draw to Asian culture,” according to Stewart. Chopsticks, dishes, and decorations pepper almost every surface of their home. “We have an affinity for Japan. My family and I have been there several times.”

The Jensens collect Kokeshi dolls, and have an assortment of pottery they made on one of their trips alongside a twelfth-generation potter. However, what Stewart found most interesting was that the Jensen family’s travels to the Pacific island nation had a huge influence on every member: Stewart says that through Zoom, he was even given a tour of the Jensen children’s rooms, and that Japanese art and anime were prominent features.

“You don’t talk about that kind of stuff at work, and so when you open the doors and get to see it, it’s pretty cool.” Stewart asserts that it was delightful to observe how Jensen’s love of Japan was something he shared with his kids: “It’s just kind of cool to see how [the affinity for Asian culture was] passed down. It shows his dedication to his family [and that] he spends time with [them].”

The business development representative with a palace of plants

Motivosity business development representative Colton Weeks had the opportunity to get to know his colleague, Cat Rogers, better than ever with remote work technology. Through Zoom, Weeks was able to get a glimpse into his coworker’s home.

Even though the two work together on a daily basis, Weeks felt like he was able to get a better understanding of Rogers through the way she had curated her environment: her home looked more like a greenhouse than a traditional living space. Every surface was covered in endless greenery―her apartment mirrored the look and feel of a Pacific Northwest rainforest or an alien planet.

“What it looked like was as if you were walking into a greenhouse―literally plants on shelves, on cabinets…. hanging from the ceilings all over the place,” Weeks notes. “Cat [is] probably one of the people with the most life to her that I’ve ever met. [She’s] very bright [and] vibrant. She’s always trying to be the life of the party [and to] bring excitement, and I can see that her apartment filled with those plants is definitely a reflection of her and her personality.”

Weeks reflects on how being physically separated has led to deeper connections in the long run: “Even though I haven’t been in [the] physical presence of my coworkers in the last three months or so, I feel closer to them.”

The COO who has a Da Vincian flair

Brett Barlow, cofounder and CEO of Everee, a company that allows employees to be paid daily, led his team to close their Series A funding as the public health crisis raged on.

In honor of the raise, Ron Ross, Barlow’s cofounder and COO, built a Rube Goldberg machine in his home: he connected a record player that, once it was turned on, set a series of marbles, Hot Wheels toy cars, and Jenga puzzle pieces into motion, culminating into the final event: the smashing of a unicorn figurine. The mechanism was a representation of Everee’s bright future, and the company’s hope of one day becoming a unicorn itself.

“It also functions as a portal into the personal lives of the people we’ve only previously known under strictly professional circumstances.

“That’s not something he wouldn’t have done if he wasn’t at home,” Barlow says of Ross’s inventiveness. The Rube Goldberg machine was built because “one thing kicks off another, kicks off another, [which] kind of symbolizes working together,” Barlow tells me. The machine was certainly a testament to Ross’s innovative nature and revealed the deeper way that he thinks about the interaction of the congruent parts in his company.

As we continue to work from home, we have a chance to get to know each other a little better. Even though we are physically separated, and even though these times make many of us cleave to a constant sense of uncertainty, we can recognize a few bright spots: we still have new and unique opportunities to be vulnerable, intimate, and real with the people who make up our individual universes.

“Normally, I wouldn’t have had the extra money,” he says, referring to the fact that the majority of his paycheck is allocated towards his rent, car insurance, and other bills at the beginning of each month. However, Holmes was able to solve his dilemma thanks to everyday pay: a process where employees are paid within twenty-four hours of their most recent shift.

Chip, a local cookie delivery company, has recently adopted the everyday pay model, and as one of their bakers, Holmes was able to access the funds he needed for his tire almost right away. After confronting his defunct car, he quickly thought, “Oh, I’m getting paid from Chip tomorrow―there’s eighty bucks! That’s enough to get a tire change!”

Ultimately, he says, being able to access his paycheck on a daily basis saved him from having to wait six more days―until payday―to fix his car.

A brief history of bi-monthly paychecks

According to Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, worker compensation in the nineteenth century was synonymous with indentured servitude. Agricultural workers were tied to the land and were paid in the form of food and shelter while sailors were paid once every two years for their daunting work at sea.

As industrialization came about, factory laborers were compensated for their toils once a week―on Saturday afternoons―with the understanding that they could spend their paychecks on drinks at the local pub that evening and use Sunday as an opportunity to recover from their stupors.

In the 1930s, Social Security came into existence, followed in 1942 with the first payroll tax that encompassed the entirety of the working class. This time also brought the advent of primitive computers that could manage massive paycheck calculations, and checks came to be used in order to properly report income tax information to the Treasury.

In order to organize this information for the tax regime, and implement a predictable schedule for the transfer of information in regards to employee salary, employers adopted the traditional model of bi-monthly paychecks. As a result, it appears that we are still operating off of a payment model that was born of the crude technology available to us in the 1940s.

It’s clear that our technology has evolved exponentially since the second World War, however for the first time in history, employee-first ideologies are beginning to come to the fore. As companies expand, employers are exploring options to provide the best employee experience in an effort to attract and keep top-notch talent.

But, will everyday pay be more than just another company perk? Can it really offer an opportunity to help individual employees?

What everyday pay does for employees

When Ron Ross’s daughter went off to college, he found himself faced with a distinct predicament: even though his daughter had a job, she continued to come to him for short-term loans to cover expenses that popped up between her scheduled paychecks.

From what Ross could tell, there seemed to be a disconnection between when his daughter worked, when she received her paycheck, and when her bills were due. “People who are living paycheck-to-paycheck have earnings that are locked up in the pay cycle,” he explains. “If they had access to those earnings, they wouldn’t have that issue.”

This challenge prompted Ross to cofound Everee, a payment and HR management company that helps companies give their employees access to everyday pay. “We service companies that have a lot of gig workers or contractors,1099 employees, full-time and part-time employees; we built a solution that’s flexible and that can facilitate paying any type of employee or arrangement,” Ross says.

“This new pay model points to the formation of an environment where employees feel connected to a larger sense of purpose―something that is becoming a priority for many startups."

Chip has been working with Everee to deliver everyday pay to its employees since January 2020. “I was looking for a benefit I could offer to my employees,” says Sean Wilson, founder and CEO. “Because as we all know, it’s a competitive market out there. I felt like this was one of those benefits that everyone could enjoy. No matter what position you’re in, everyone thinks, ‘Man, it’d be nice to have that money in my bank account a little sooner.’”

Connor Brookes, for one―manager of Chip’s Provo location―found it nearly impossible to cover the cost of his undergrad education with the bi-monthly pay model. Budgeting for his living expenses and his school payments every couple of weeks was too challenging: he repeatedly found himself falling short when it came to making his payments, and, consequently, was forced to take out a personal loan to cover his tuition.

After utilizing everyday pay, Brookes says that he was able to pay his tuition on time without the added interest of a personal loan, thereby saving him an extra cost. “I think [everyday pay is] really useful,” Brookes says. “It also makes it very convenient to get quick help if you need it.”

“It takes a little bit of adjustment for a lot of employees,” Wilson notes. “But over time, they start to get comfortable with the idea. It just reduces the time between when you do the work and when you get paid, so I think there’s a little bit more of that instant gratification and reward than people are used to.”

However, it seems that everyday pay transcends the simple notion of instant gratification. Holmes tells me, “Today, for instance, I worked a six-hour shift. I’m getting paid tomorrow, and I already paid my credit card bill that’s due on Friday. I’m not getting a late fee; I’m paying things on time.”

As an hourly employee, Holmes is able to mentally keep track of his hours spent working and effectively budget for his bills on a day-to-day basis. The result is that he stays ahead of his payment deadlines and avoids late fees. “It’s a lot harder and more stressful to budget a bigger paycheck every two weeks versus getting paid daily,” he says.

For Brookes and Holmes, it’s clear that everyday pay offers a sense of personal agency―an opportunity to have more control over their finances on a daily basis, and as a result, more control over their lives.

What everyday pay does for employers

At the beginning of 2020, twenty-one states across America increased their minimum wages. As the cost of labor continues to rise on a national scale, small businesses and burgeoning startups are striving to find clever ways to keep up with the demands required to recruit talent.

Many founders understand that, in order to compete for high-level workers, they must offer benefits such as more paid time off or the opportunity to engage in mentorship programs. However, as employee expectations continue to rise, the resulting perks end up costing companies.

“People who are living paycheck-to-paycheck have earnings that are locked up in the pay cycle,” he explains. “If they had access to those earnings, they wouldn’t have that issue.”

As the cofounder of Everee, Ross employed his deep understanding of how employees think in order to create something that would meet a clear demand: “I think there will come a day when employees expect to get paid on a much faster cycle. If you think about it, employees are actually creditors of their company―they’ve worked and provided value to their employer but haven’t captured that value in exchange in the form of a paycheck.”

By offering access to funds within 24 hours of working, companies can satisfy a very real need that their workers have. This new pay model poses a potential solution to the employee demand for lifestyle benefits―and it comes at a reduced cost for companies when compared with paid time off and other perks like extraneous wellness programs and company-paid gym memberships.

However, a specific challenge employers will have to navigate when it comes to everyday pay is making an adaptation in their HR processes. Currently, HR departments organize their payroll activities to reflect the bi-monthly model, meaning that all deadlines are curated to fit this schedule. With everyday pay, companies will have to adapt by utilizing micro-processes that can be used on a day-to-day basis: keeping track of employee clock-ins and clock-outs and adjusting any errors resulting from workers forgetting to properly execute these tasks, will have to be reformatted to fit a daily calculation model.

“We had to implement a system where we had management verifying the hours and then [have] HR and corporate verifying those hours and making sure that that was happening on a daily basis so we could continue to get everyone paid,” says Wilson. He thought this would be a difficult administrative task but found that it actually benefited his entire company.

He says that the process is kind of like cleaning your house. The idea is that it’s easier to tackle a few chores every day than it is to let many tasks pile up over a longer period of time. Chip now responds to changes in real-time, and has gained better labor data. As a result, Wilson has seen his company’s administrative procedures improve steadily. The commitment to a daily cleanup on the HR front has led to better organization overall.

The future of work

The concept of everyday pay signifies a shift from our focus on developing technology for the sake of growing businesses, to a focus on how technology can help make people’s lives the best they can be. This new pay model points to the formation of an environment where employees feel connected to a larger sense of purpose―something that is becoming a priority for many startups.

Everyday pay is not only evidence of an emerging perception of how employees operate in their lives; it’s an opportunity for employers to build unprecedented empathy for the individuals who contribute to their visions.