Forms 1120, 1040s, W-9, 5471, oh my! If you’ve nearly succumbed to the tax season panic, keep reading — tax experts across the state have offered their best tips to make filing correct forms a breeze. Whether you’re a small business owner, managing a global entity or just filing your family’s return, Utah’s experts have the answers.

Feeling the pain of high quarterly taxes? Try these strategies

David Jensen

Tax Partner | KPMG | Salt Lake City

“The ‘Tax Trifecta’ will dominate the 2025 business tax landscape as organizations navigate unprecedented change. This convergence of major tax events includes expiring $4 trillion of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions, ongoing global minimum tax implementation, and sweeping regulatory changes from laws like the Inflation Reduction Act and potential tariffs under the new administration. This complex environment is reshaping how organizations approach tax management. A recent KPMG C-suite survey revealed that 87 percent of leaders are now considering managed services solutions to help their tax departments harness data and technology more strategically. The tax function is rapidly evolving from strictly a compliance-focused operation to a much more holistic, critical, strategic driver of business value. Organizations that adapt to this new reality through enhanced technological and operational capabilities will be better positioned to turn these challenges into opportunities.”

Brad Poll

Partner | Eide Bailly LLC | Layton

“Even though 2024 has come and gone, there are still opportunities to receive deductions if payments are made in 2025. Most are required to be made before 4/15/2025. Some deductions to consider are contributions to an IRA and, if you are self-employed, to a retirement account.”

Jenny Groberg

Founder | BookSmarts Accounting & Bookkeeping | Kaysville

“In filing business taxes, business owners should avoid showing little to no income on their return or losses for three out of the five most recent years. This is a flag that a business might be a way to write off expenses rather than function [with a genuine business purpose]. Additionally, business owners need to be careful not to show excessive expenses in particular line items. The IRS will compare your business return to businesses in similar industries, and if you’re reporting extreme expenses, that can trigger an audit. … Be careful of large cash transactions. Avoid them at all costs. … The home office deduction is often missed. If you do any work from home, you may qualify for this deduction. This deduction is determined by the percentage of space in your home used solely for business. These home deductions include mortgage interest, property taxes, home insurance, wifi, utilities, repairs, depreciation and HOA fees. For example, if you use 15 percent of your home for business, and your home expenses are $150,000 for the year, you could deduct $22,500.

The wheels of the IRS and state tax commissions turn slowly, but they turn. I have seen many small businesses get behind on tax payments, and they think it will go away unnoticed or disappear. The penalties and interest are so significant that once they are notified of the discrepancy, it is hard for most businesses to pay back what is owed, plus the additional fines. Do everything you can to file your taxes on time by focusing on your accounting and bookkeeping at year-end to avoid unnecessary interest expenses.”

Brett M. Jensen

Tax Partner | Haynie & Company | Salt Lake City

“Consider purchasing transferable energy credits to offset the passive income generated from your investments, such as rental properties or limited partnerships. This strategy can help reduce your overall tax liability: By strategically acquiring these credits at a discounted rate, you can achieve additional tax savings while supporting renewable energy initiatives and lowering the effective tax rate on your passive earnings.”

Garth Simpson

Manager | Squire & Co. | Orem

“One often overlooked deduction [for individuals] is for student loan interest. Even if you don’t itemize your deductions, you may still qualify to deduct up to $2,500 in student loan interest, depending on your income level. For businesses, a common mistake is neglecting to track and deduct business-related vehicle expenses. Keeping detailed records is key, whether you use the standard mileage rate or actual expenses. Additionally, businesses should explore the R&D tax credit, which applies to more industries than you might think, including software development and manufacturing.

The Inflation Reduction Act introduced several clean energy incentives. Individuals and businesses investing in energy-efficient property improvements or electric vehicles should ensure they’re taking full advantage of these credits.”

Financial services industry leaders discuss open banking, AI and regulatory hurdles

Experts warn that Utah is headed toward an energy crisis.

Operation Gigawatt, Utah’s ambitious renewable energy initiative, seeks to avert an energy shortage and maintain the state’s position as a leader in power.

“Operation Gigawatt has four key objectives,” says Emy Faulkner Lesofski, Gov. Spencer Cox’s energy advisor and new director of the Office of Energy Development. “First, increasing transmission to get energy where it’s needed; second, developing new energy resources and securing what we have; third, enhancing our policies to enable clean energy resources like geothermal and nuclear; and fourth, investing in innovation and research. These objectives are intended to secure baseload, get energy to where consumers and industry need it, and foster innovation, taking things from the lab to the market.”

With this project’s implantation, no other industry stands to benefit more directly than real estate.

Energy experts discuss grid stability, electric vehicles and nuclear power

Where land meets power

“The commercial real estate sector is the largest economic tool that the state of Utah has … [and is] responsible for the velocity and opportunities that exist to attract occupiers, bringing in billions of dollars of investment to the state every year,” says Tom Freeman, vice chair at Colliers Utah.

Rising energy costs, lack of diverse power sources and struggling infrastructure drove the private sector to raise concerns with state leadership. As a result, Freeman helped set up a political action committee to get the initiative moving.

“Utah is one of the most diverse economies in the country, and that’s [driven by] the commercial real estate world,” Freeman says. “It’s no secret that the demand for power is ever increasing as the world changes. Without an investment into our utility sector, our economic development is going to come to a screeching halt.”

“We’re not just avoiding an energy crisis; we’re turning this into an opportunity, positioning Utah as an energy leader, innovator and net energy exporter.”

Emy Faulkner Lesofski

Dr. Bryony Richards, an economic geologist and senior research scientist at the Energy & Geoscience Institute at the University of Utah, agrees with Freeman.

“Energy-intensive industries such as artificial intelligence, data centers and advanced manufacturing stand to gain significantly from this expansion, as they require consistent, high-capacity energy to sustain operations,” Richards says.

In 2022, Richards says total energy consumption throughout the state reached 849 trillion Btu, or “British Thermal Units,” a unit of measurement used to determine the heat. She says demand is only going to increase as new technology, like AI, adds additional pressure to our grids.

Keeping up with the gigawatts

Over the next 10 years, Operation Gigawatt seeks to address this issue by doubling Utah’s capacity to generate energy — an additional four gigawatts — through what Lesofski calls an “any- and more-of-the-above” approach.

“Our geography has gifted us with a wide range of resources,” she says. “We are only one of seven states that generate utility-scale geothermal power, and Operation Gigawatt will further develop our state’s untapped but substantial geothermal potential. Eight out of 10 homes in Utah are heated with natural gas; we were No. 14 in the nation for solar generating capacity. You can see that we use all our resources, and we need more of these resources if we are going to get to that additional 4GW.”

Richards’ research focuses on identifying and recovering these resources.

“We’re examining historical mine waste for valuable minerals, which could supply the raw materials needed to build a resilient energy infrastructure,” Richards says. “By integrating such projects into the energy supply chain, Utah is enhancing its ability to support technologies critical to the energy transition, such as advanced batteries and hydrogen electrolyzers, again feeding back into Utah’s energy cycle.”

Nuclear energy is also on the table for Operation Gigawatt.

“Most of the contention around nuclear power stems from outdated technologies and negative depictions in popular media,” Lesofski says. “Today’s nuclear power is vastly safer and more efficient than the nuclear power of yesterday, but these are technologies and data that aren’t well-socialized yet. Nuclear power’s strengths of unmatched energy density, safety and ability to meet environmental goals are why states like Utah have been considering adding this resource to their energy mix.”

Projects like the UAMPS (Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems) and NuScale small modular reactor initiative aim to develop safer, efficient and easy-to-integrate reactors that can continue quell nuclear power unrest.

Power for the people

It’s not just corporations who stand to lose if Operation Gigawatt isn’t implemented — the average resident would take the biggest day-to-day hit.

“There’s already been a large increase [in energy costs] to the end consumer,” Freeman says. “The consumer is you and me — people that turn on their lights or use the garbage disposal. We’re seeing increases in energy bills. That’s not keeping us in a competitive state, and it will absolutely stymie our ability to continue to be a leader.”

No one wants to move to — or stay — in a place that can barely keep a dishwasher running, Freeman says.

Richards says part of the beauty of Operation Gigawatt’s design is that while it supports corporations and industries, it’s also looking out for the individual.

“Residents benefit from the stabilization of energy prices and increased grid reliability, reducing the risk of blackouts or price spikes,” she says. “By doubling the state’s power production over the next decade, the initiative aims to ensure a reliable and affordable energy supply to support economic growth, community needs and technological advancement.”

Operation Gigawatt isn’t meant to be a Band-Aid for the energy crisis — it’s meant to be a diving board.

“We’re not just avoiding an energy crisis; we’re turning this into an opportunity, positioning Utah as an energy leader, innovator and net energy exporter,” Lesofski says.

She, along with other Operation Gigawatt partners, hopes to see Utah become the example of energy usage for the rest of the country.

“I’m confident the projects we’re undertaking and the timelines we’re achieving will serve as a template for other states,” she says. “It’s both an honor and exciting to be part of the team driving this vision forward, creating an abundance of energy here at home, and securing our role as the energy powerhouse of the West.”

Utah’s nanosilicon solution

When we make access to the industry easier, the right people will come.

Amy Osmond Cook

Utah Business proudly presents this year’s cohort of our Leaders of the Year award. These 12 honorees represent the greatest accomplishments of Utah’s business community in 2024 and were selected by the Utah Business editorial team.

Amy Osmond Cook

Co-Founder & CMO | Fullcast

/in/amyosmondcook/

In January, Fullcast, a SaaS company revolutionizing revenue operations, ran a $34 million seed round buoyed by female investors. Co-founder and CMO Amy Osmond Cook helped make it happen.

Despite this rousing success, Cook didn’t initially want to be an entrepreneur. Actually, she never planned on working at all — “I wanted to get married, have kids and never look back,” she says.

But after a divorce left her alone with small children, Cook realized she needed to pivot: “I had to feed my kids, honestly. I went to work out of necessity.”

Cook took advantage of a series of opportunities: admission into school, writing jobs, a job in marketing, and, eventually, a job at Simplus. The work molded her, and along with her partners at Simplus, she founded Fullcast.

“I had never considered startups,” she says. “And now, I have the startup bug — the flexibility, creativity, energy and brilliance of those I work with. I just love it. I’m giving it everything I have.”

Cook says that success is thanks to a mix of luck and hard work. In her position now, she’s able to create those same opportunities for anyone willing to roll up their sleeves.

“I don’t want women to be afraid of going back to work if they want to,” she says. “All the things that are necessary in a technology startup environment are also in a family: multitasking, project management, driving to deadline, managing chaos, pivoting quickly? These are all things that I remind women who have raised kids that they know very, very well.”

However, Cook emphasized that she’s not on a mission to tokenize women — or anyone.

“I don’t ever want to be chosen for something because I’m a woman,” she says. “I want to be chosen because I’m good, and I just so happen to be a woman. When we lower barriers, when we make access to the industry easier, the right people will come.”

That’s what made a female-led seed round possible, she says.

“We were deliberate,” she says. “We were looking for anyone with talent, expertise, relationships.”

Cook says she didn’t sweat pitching Fullcast to these investors.

“We did not need to convince them,” she says. “They were grateful for the opportunity, and they came right on board.”

That kind of investor — and team — comes from being willing to search outside what Cook calls “the technology ecosystem proper.”

“There are many, many talented people already involved in Utah’s business community, and you should absolutely look there,” she says. “But challenge yourself and your teams to also look in non-traditional places that may not be as obvious — like these stay-at-home moms who are so well suited for our industry.”

Cook urges other businesses to remember that a rising tide lifts all boats.

“Look for talent, look at their potential,” she says. “A diverse, successful team will often come naturally. I hope people see what we’ve done here, and how amazing our teams are, and decide to follow suit.”

SkyShare is on a mission to democratize flying private.

“Our business model is leveling the playing field for younger, hungry businesses to compete with the Goliaths in their field. Our ideal client profile is someone who is growing,” says Michael Patwin, VP of marketing and brand at SkyShare.

SkyShare was developed by founder and CEO Cory Bengtzen with no outside funding. Other scrappy founders — like Mike Littledike, who started Capita Financial Network as a one-person operation in 2008 — are the exact types of entrepreneurs SkyShare is looking to service.

“A private plane allows you to be around other like-minded individuals in a safe space to have vulnerable, deep conversations,” Littledike says. “It’s almost impossible to assign a dollar value to these conversations. The time on jets is the most valuable time with clients I ever have, full stop.”

Littledike started as a fractional jet owner and eventually bought his own aircraft through SkyShare’s brokerage department, also retaining SkyShare’s management team while reaping the benefits of full ownership.

An all-encompassing investment

“Anyone who is going to try to spreadsheet out a plane, they’re climbing the wrong line. Jets are about the convenience, the time savings, the experiences with your family. As a bonus — and this was totally unforeseen — I learned there are a ton of business opportunities,” he says. “People don’t say no to going on a golf trip on a jet.”

Patwin says SkyShare’s mission is to give more non-billionaire entrepreneurs these kinds of opportunities. So far, it boasts 70 owners through its fractional share programs: SFX and SFX+. Starting at a 1/16 share, owners receive 20 flight days in any jet within their program.

While SkyShare’s fractional ownership programs aren’t the first of their kind ― “NetJet is the godfather of this format, no debate,” Patwin says ― they are the most affordable.

The SFX+ program costs around $950,000 for a typical three-year clause. A single jet in SkyShare’s inventory can retail for multi-millions. Instead of Fortune 500 CEOs like NetJet, SkyShare is looking at what Patwin calls “the middle market,” with SFX+ at the upper limit and the traditional program at the lower.

“We looked at what our customers were flying most, the missions they were taking, and picked aircraft around that,” Patwin says. “Everybody is an entrepreneur, so they’re looking for this sort of diversity in options.”

With SFX, shareholders have access to planes that can handle most short-haul flights: Pilatus PC-12s, Citation CJs and Citation Excels. The SFX+ program includes these and three other aircraft: Challenger 300s, Gulfstream G200s and Gulfstream G450s, which are better for overseas trips.

“Flying from Denver to Hawaii, Salt Lake to Europe, Scottsdale to Rio … those sorts of trips can happen in the SFX+ planes,” Patwin says.

How much does fractional jet ownership cost?

For some potential shareholders, the near-million price tag was still daunting. Patwin says his team’s programs inadvertently cut “the little guys” out of the picture. In response, SkyShare debuted financing options for fractional ownership through a bank partner ― something no other aircraft company, NetJet included, is doing.

“Instead of coming up with the full $950,000, you only need 35 percent of that down,” Patwin says. “The standard SFX program also allows for 35 percent down, with shares starting at $335,000.”

Customers who finance their shares still benefit from the tax deductions associated with ownership and free up capital that is often desperately needed.

But even if you can fork over that 35 percent, there are a few other requirements for share ownership.

“You have to spend at least 50 percent of your time — or own a business — in the West to fly with SkyShare,” Patwin says, and trips must start or end in a Western state. Flying from Denver to Washington, D.C.? Green light. Flying from New York to Miami? Pick another fleet.

Patwin says this is what has kept SkyShare afloat while most of its former competition for the middle market shuttered.

“These companies that failed, they didn’t establish a root system,” he says. “They killed themselves on repositioning. You need to develop a tremendous infrastructure where you can work planes back. SkyShare is always in the backyard of the client, where they don’t need to do anything but pick up the phone.”

Flying pre-owned aircraft, carefully selected based on mission type, is the other piece that keeps SkyShare accessible.

“We’re not beholden to the manufacturers and their timetables; we can acquire aircraft whenever we desire,” Patwin says. “Also, we can look for aircraft priced around the same margin, so it doesn’t really matter which aircraft you’re on title to. You can be on title to a PC-12 and only fly the G200, or vice versa.”

Despite aiming for ― and claiming ― the middle market, Patwin says these program features have started attracting the upper class, too.

“People who can afford NetJets are still choosing SkyShare as a supplemental lift,” he says. “That shows us our product is pretty compelling.”

Scouter bridges the gap between business owners and photographers looking for locations.

The founders, Emily and Landon Newton, are seasoned creatives who developed their company based on the needs of their community.

“Anyone involved in photo or film knows what a horrible and consistent headache location scouting is,” Landon Newton says. “Until Scouter, we were literally going door to door, asking to see people’s bathrooms or backyards.” Now, creatives can browse hundreds of locations in seconds.

Scouter allows anyone to list their location for free—no money is exchanged until someone books your location. Then, the Newtons take 15 percent.

Once the site went live, Landon Newton says it took a week for reservations to pour in.

“People don’t think about how much content is made every day,” Landon Newton says. “Influencers and YouTubers post all the time—sometimes multiple videos a day, and all of it needs to be shot somewhere. This is ongoing throughout the year.”

That’s the beauty of Scouter, the Newtons say. Unlike most side hustles, this work is consistent.

There’s demand for your office space

“We have so much demand from the creative side that we’re doing whatever we can to get businesses’ attention,” Landon Newton says. While the majority of locations on the site are in Utah, the Newtons say they have locations around the world.

It’s not difficult to identify businesses and homeowners who have a property worth listing, Emily Newton says—it’s convincing them that they do.“It’s assumed that you need to have a big mansion or a huge office building, something flashy and modern, to have value,” she says. “But how many films have you seen where they need a trailer home? A shed? An empty warehouse?”

The couple says that even the spooky grove of trees in your backyard has value—and they’re not talking a few dollars, either.

“An average home can make between $50 and 300 an hour,” Landon Newton says. “For small businesses, it ranges between $500 and $5,000 a day. Larger businesses can make double or triple that.”

The couple says the biggest demands are for larger businesses: restaurants, grocery stores and concert venues.

“These places are often put off because they have specific operating times and don’t want to close during those periods,” Emily Newton says. “But that’s another disconnect between locations and the creatives we’ve seen. Filmmakers are used to doing midnight shoots, early morning or any odd hour. The film crew can come in any time you’re not open, meaning you’re making this money without losing any traditional customers in the process.”

Even companies need a side hustle

Stanza, a company based in southern Utah, also wants to know about your office spaces—but rather than one-off appointments, they’re looking to fill them long-term. Stanza is a marketplace that connects workers with flexible workspaces, the “Airbnb of office space.”

“It’s a whole new tier of economics that we’re unlocking,” says Matt Riley, Stanza’s founder.

Riley says Stanza unlocks a category of inventory that’s traditionally been hidden from users.

“Our hosts are existing companies that have a room, maybe a couple of rooms, that are empty,” he says. “It’s often a small enough chunk of the office to where it wouldn’t make sense to sublease the space but still could and should be put to use somehow.”

Stanza came about in response to the early days of the pandemic. Much of the world shifted to remote work, leaving office buildings barren. Now, with remote, hybrid and full in-office models competing for the spotlight, Riley says Stanza can bridge the gaps.“The vast majority of our customers are looking for dedicated spaces to rent out month to month,” he says. “There are times of year—like summertime or spring break, for example—when we see a spike in smaller spaces just for that season, but in general, we see long-term commitments. Some folks are looking to get in the space and be there forever."

Startups were the first group of early adopters that Stanza targeted.

“The way these existing companies price their spaces are often more emotionally driven than by square footage,” Riley says. “While that might seem counterproductive, it happens to line up nicely with the needs of startups.”

Pressured to be efficient with their funding, startups usually need affordable, flexible spaces.

“Stanza is uniquely positioned to relieve the pain points that startups have: the length of time of an agreement and the cost,” he says.

Once you have the startups on your side, Riley says the rest falls into place.

“Startups are a magnet,” he says. “They’re cool, and people like to be lumped into the same category—something dynamic, exciting, innovative.”

As more startups became Stanza users, Riley says the company saw more remote teams booking similar spaces.

“Clustering is happening a lot,” he says. “These remote groups are getting and growing together through Stanza.”

But no matter who is in the space or how long they’re there, Riley stands by a simple philosophy: “An empty building benefits no one.”

It seems the public approves. “We’ve grown to over 200 listings throughout all of Utah,” Riley says.

That number is set to increase exponentially through 2024; Stanza just entered into a contract with a global brokerage firm that will take their marketplace across the country.

“In the last couple of weeks, we’ve opened up Brooklyn, New York; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Nashville, Tennessee; Chicago, Illinois; and Seattle, Washington to users,” he says.

In every location and at all kinds of office buildings, Riley says the office space ecosystem agrees on one thing.

“Amidst all the turmoil, … flex space is thriving,” he says. “Coworking providers are flourishing, and we’re going to be part of that double-digit growth.”

Finding space for everyone with office space side hustles

While Scouter and Stanza are disrupting their markets, both have made an effort not to step on anyone’s toes while playing middleman.

“We’ve become full-time location scouts so other creatives don’t have to,” Emily Newton says. “What has been an expensive and consistent headache has now become something that benefits creatives, individuals and business owners. We’re very involved in the creative industry and community, so we’ve been careful to deliver exactly what was needed.”

For Riley, there are a few more obstacles. Technically, Stanza can effectively help people looking for space and business owners skip over brokers, agents and property managers. But Riley doesn’t want to abandon tradition entirely.

“We’re committed to adding value for everyone in commercial real estate,” says Riley. “We actively avoid any motions that would create friction within our relationships. Instead, we have a philosophy of partnering and adding value to everyone involved in owning and maintaining a building, whether through easing lending complexity, cash flow or just populating the space.”

Regardless of what kind of space you have or what sort of commitment you’re looking for, Scouter and Stanza exist to help you earn side income.

“Through companies like ours,” Landon Newton says, “You’re able to not only run your normal business, … but also see pretty sizeable amounts on the side, all without any big life changes. We’ve been amazed by the amount of opportunities.”

Ashley Bell

CEO | Redemption Holding Company
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To tell the full story of where this started for me, we’d have to go back to kindergarten,” says Ashley Bell, former White House policy advisor and Small Business Administration regional manager.

Bell is the CEO of Redemption Holding Company (RHC), an entity he formed with Dr. Bernice King, to fund and manage Black-owned banks. Their board will be crafted with highly educated and deeply experienced people, from the CFO of Major League Soccer to the Chief Information Officer of the NFL.

While a lawyer by trade, his history with banking runs deep. In 1934, his great-grandfather started a bank to finance sharecroppers in Georgia in an effort to reduce poverty in his community.

“There were over 130 Black-owned banks at the time,” Bell says. “But at every economic downturn, Black and brown people were the first to get fired. Since the Black-owned banks held these monies, this had a hard impact on them, too.”

His own family’s bank was forcibly auctioned in 1976. Since then, Bell says the number of Black-owned banks has dropped significantly. When Bell was asked to lead the PPP loan distribution in 2020, he again had a front-row seat to the struggles of Black-owned banks.

Historically, Bell says Black-owned banks have the cards stacked against them: from disproportionately high loan default rates to targeted capital limitations, it’s become increasingly impossible to keep doors open.

“These are high stakes,” Bell says. “We are on the verge of losing a generation of entrepreneurs.”

These experiences informed the impact banking movement. “Crafted with Dr. King, impact banking is the concept that minority banks are mission-driven,” he says. “We’re looking for total racial integration—not only can we work in the same places, go to school, shop, but bank in the same place and be treated exactly the same.”

RHC’s first action will be acquiring and converting Holladay Bank and Trust into a minority depository institution. Although Utah’s Black community makes up only 2 percent of the population, Bell says the acceptance of the plans for Holladay Bank—to be branded outside the community as Redemption Bank, the first Black bank in the Rockies, has been overwhelming.

“Every leader in this state has a group of people that they’re fighting for, whether it’s better child care, addiction recovery or access to education,” he says. “There is an alignment of mission, of a commitment to improvement.”

Once the acquisition is completed, Redemption will become the 17th Black-owned bank in the United States.

While he hopes that Redemption will be an example for other non-minority banks in the U.S., he hasn’t stopped there.

“My kids will never walk into a bank, and their kids will never know there were even branches,” he says. “What we’re doing, not just at Redemption, but everywhere, we’re investing—we’re going to serve people where they live. Through Black-owned banks, we’re making banking accessible for everyone.”

Co-Founder | Tech-Moms

in/trinaceleste

At 18, Trina Limpert had wrecked her car, lost her license and felt stuck at a fast-food job. She was desperate to alter her trajectory.

“I knew education was the way to change my life,” she says.

While her family had been on welfare and did not have the financial means to get her into college, she saved and enrolled at Weber State University. Limpert says she must have been born with grit.

“All of this passion and motivation, I think it’s always been here,” she laughs. “I’ve never really hesitated. I guess that’s been a good and bad thing, but I’ve learned a lot from being willing to jump in.”

In her college computer science classes, this belief was tested for the first time. “I started to doubt myself,” she says. “I was the only woman in these classes. Sometimes, a professor would tell a blonde joke or call me out or dismiss my comments entirely.”

Fortunately, Limpert’s gut instinct kept her in the program. Since then, she’s received degrees and certificates from multiple institutions, including the University of Utah and Harvard University. Her expertise, which she had built from time at places like Oracle and eBay, culminated in Tech-Moms, her latest project.

“There weren’t many women in the tech field when I was in school, but the numbers are even worse now,” she says. “We’re backsliding on gender equality, so honestly, Tech-Moms came from anger,” Limpert says. “We have this huge disconnect in the tech world where we say we can’t find enough people, but then there are all of these women saying they can’t get in. We needed to knock down these walls.”

Within a few months, a gender-equality group of “Avengers” was formed. Limpert, along with Mikel Blake and Robbyn Scribner, launched a series of cohorts that offer education, professional development and a network of support for women interested in tech careers. In four years, Tech-Moms has grown to over 440 cohorts with about 600 participants. Limpert says they’re also managing a waitlist.

“What’s made me successful is the motivation I get from knowing the lives I can change,” Limpert says. “It’s not hypothetical. I could see what these women could do, but also that they were being excluded, both by the industry and by themselves. After the two-month program, I see them leave with jobs and career paths, but I also see their mindsets shift and their confidence grow. I see them become the best versions of themselves, and that’s everything to me.” To Main Page

in/cydnitetro

Less than 30 percent of the world’s tech leaders are women. Cydni Tetro is on a mission to change that.

From the C-suite of multiple tech and marketing companies to the boards of groups like Intermountain Health and the Utah Innovation Fund, and now, as the chief innovation officer at Swire Coca-Cola, she’s held all types of positions in a variety of industries. Through every job and board position, one thing has remained consistent: creating gender equity.

“We have big challenges as a world, and they’re only solved when the brilliance of everyone comes together,” Tetro says. “If we don’t put more women around the table, I can tell you now, we won’t come up with the right solutions.”

Making change is a group effort, she says, and the impact she’s made comes from firsthand experience of navigating a common path alongside her peers.

“Throughout my career, I’ve asked the questions, ‘Why did I hit this roadblock?’ or ‘What caused this gap in understanding?’ and [those I’ve turned to for advice] have highlighted things that need changing,” she continues. “Anyone can do that, with intention.”

Tetro describes herself as an “activator” and believes that everyone has talents. She views her job as figuring out how to maximize those around her to do something greater than she could do on her own. What makes all this possible for Tetro is a clear and strict set of priorities.

“My family ranks No.1,” she says. “No. 2 is building my career so that I can provide for my family, and the No. 3 is giving back and influencing good things.”

The professional and service-oriented parts of Tetro’s life work in tandem. She puts her heart into companies and organizations that can bring about real change, she says, and she only puts time into things she’s passionate about. “It’s intentional. It’s a choice. I, along with everyone else, have a finite number of resources,” Tetro continues. “I know that a legacy of making a difference is a priority, so that’s what I’m investing in.”

Despite all her success, Tetro says she’s not done yet.

“10 years from now, I hope we actually don’t talk about women in tech because it’s just the norm,” Tetro says. “I hope everyone else working for gender equity and I have made such an enormous impact that, by then, that’s just how the world operates.” To Main Page

This story appears in the March issue of Utah Business. Subscribe here.

According to the state of Utah’s annual report, 2022 had a record number of Utahns experiencing homelessness. The report points to rising living costs and lack of accessible and affordable housing as primary causes of increased displacement. The private and government sectors have new projects they hope can work together to combat the crisis.

Utah First Homes

At the end of 2023, Gov. Spencer Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson announced plans to fund a starter home program, dubbed “Utah First Homes,” for the FY25 budget. If the legislature approves the $150 million price tag, 35,000 new starter homes will be constructed by 2028.

Starter homes are smaller, less expensive homes lived in for a few years. The target homebuyers are often young families in the process of saving for a long-term home.

Steve Waldrip, the newly appointed senior advisor for Housing Strategy and Innovation, says there are already 40,000 Utahns who fit this description.

“We have a generation that is missing the opportunity to build wealth through homeownership and equity,” he says. “It’s pretty frightening. In 40 years, we could have a huge group of folks who end their productive work years with very little in the way of assets to fall back on.”

But it goes deeper than the price of housing. Even those with money saved can’t find a place to live.

“We’re in a housing deficit,” he says. “Every year, we’ve fallen behind by 7,000 to 10,000 units. We had to find a way to increase housing production, or we’d only continue to get further and further behind.”

The solution, he says, is increasing density across the state.

“We want to build starter homes near job centers,” he says. “People may immediately think of Salt Lake City, which is true—many people commute across the valley to work here. But Park City, Gunnison, Delta and Moab are all poster children for critical housing shortages. We need to build everywhere.”

Despite the ever-growing need, Waldrip says similar proposals faced severe backlash in the past.

“From experience, it feels like Utah has one of the worst cases of NIMBYism,” he says. “We’re anticipating many challenges related to that.”

“Not In My Backyard,” or the NIMBY movement, opposes new developments in neighborhoods, particularly low-income housing. Waldrip says an awareness campaign is in the works to try to turn public opinion.

“Homeownership benefits everyone in the community,” he says. “It increases community engagement, which then increases volunteerism. Teen pregnancy rates decrease, and graduation rates increase—people do not realize that social and community health is tied directly to home ownership.”

Realtors, builders and developers, however, have already bought into Utah First Homes.

“The governor’s plan incentivized cities to come to the table with infrastructure funding,” he says. “The other players are similarly incentivized by the opportunity to construct in previously limited areas—as long as 60 percent of builds are these starter homes, they’ve unlocked new development regions.”

When you look at the whole picture, Waldrip says Utah First Homes is necessary.

“I’m the biggest doom and gloom person on housing,” he says. “But I think we have the momentum to do hard things and solve this problem.”

Medically Vulnerable People (MVP) Interim Housing Program

For some, home ownership isn’t the immediate need; home health care is.

That’s the role the MVP Program Facility hopes to play. The motel-turned-interim housing facility in Sandy, Utah, provides what Associate Deputy Mayor Katherine Fife calls “a continuum of care.”

“We’re seeing unprecedented need for shelter among people who are living on a fixed income,” she says. “Our aging population is being priced out, on top of facing complicated medical concerns—cancer diagnoses, complications with diabetes, recovering from surgery. These people need privacy, stability and onsite health care, which isn’t an option in traditional shelters.”

Through a partnership with Fourth Street Clinic, nurses, therapists and other health care professionals are available five days a week. The clinic also coordinates referrals required to use the facility, which is in high demand even weeks after opening.

“We hope to expand care as the program ramps up and grows,” says Janida Emerson, CEO of the Fourth Street Clinic. “In addition to staff in the facility, we also have a mobile medical clinic with three exam rooms that we bring once a week to provide primary care.”

The facility also coordinates with The Road Home, which serves the facility’s goal to eventually transition individuals into standard housing.

“Residents are eligible to be here for up to two years,” Emerson says. “But regardless of how long an individual is here, we will make sure medical services are available to them.”

The idea for the MVP program came from Salt Lake County’s pandemic response.

“I was involved in deciding how we were going to support those experiencing homelessness,” Fife says. “Unhoused people couldn’t ‘stay home, stay safe,’ so we created a hotel for those in this group who would be most at-risk if exposed to COVID-19—seniors and those with medical complications.”

The hotel was a huge success; Fife calls it a “proof of concept” for what became the MVP program.

“A housing and health care pairing of this nature hasn’t existed for two reasons,” she says. “The first is funding. But the second is something bigger—we knew this was an issue, but we didn’t really know. I think because these people were not right in front of everyone’s faces, we couldn’t understand how much help was needed. Now we do.”

Currently, the facility can accommodate 165 people. While Fife recognizes the positive impact of those beds, she says the need is exponential.

“Through this program, we’re making room in our current resource centers for those without these conditions,” she says. “But it’s not enough. We’re hoping that the success of this facility will inspire more groups to fund their own.” 

Photo by Laura Seitz | Ballet West rehearses for the 2023 production of “The Nutcracker."

There are many things that drew Pieter Gunning, a ballet dancer and Dutch citizen, to move more than 5,000 miles from the Netherlands to train at Utah’s Frederick Quinney Lawson Ballet West Academy—but it was all made possible by the academy’s efforts to create a diverse program of world-class talent.

Ballet West Academy has worked to become certified as a student exchange visa program (SEVP) for the last five years and finally received approval in Spring 2023. SEVP programs help prospective students apply for visas and admit them once they arrive in the United States, and Ballet West Academy welcomed their first international students in August.

It’s not difficult to get a visa for an accomplished dancer, says Evelyn Cisneros-Legate—Ballet West Academy’s director and the first Mexican-American prima ballerina in the U.S.—and the academy has always had international dancers in its company. Now, her focus is on helping students gain that same opportunity.

“In sharp contrast to prior years, 75 percent of our main company has trained within our academy at some point,” Cisneros-Legate says. “With that change, we want to give the broadest pool to promote from, to support our diversity initiatives and attract the highest artistic quality for the company.”

Unlocking opportunities for global talent

Obtaining the SEVP label was much more strenuous than helping dancers obtain professional visas, says Ballet West Academy Director of Business Operations Sarah Taylor.

“The approval process included site visits where we had to prove our artistic and curriculum efforts,” she says. “We proved you can’t get our training anywhere else and that we meet a world-class standard.”

Cisneros-Legate says that part of the motivation to seek this accreditation was external, as international students have been reaching out to her and the academy for years in hopes of being admitted to the program. 

At the time of this writing, three visas have been issued. Gunning was the first to receive one.

Photo by Laura Seitz | Ballet West rehearses for the 2023 production of “The Nutcracker."

“[Gunning] had expressed interest in our program long before we could accept his visa,” Cisneros-Legate says. “When we were cleared in May, I called him. To our surprise, he was able to move here a few months later.”

In the last eight years, Gunning has danced at the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague, the Hamburg Ballet and the Orlando Ballet in Florida. He had just moved back to the Netherlands when he got Cisneros-Legate’s call.

Dance, sleep, repeat

Inclusion initiatives at Ballet West expand beyond its classrooms. The academy has made a concerted effort to support dancers both in the studio and at home—literally. This commitment is shown through the purchase and renovation of a building just over one mile from the academy that serves as a residence option for students. It opened this season.

“It’s important for us to be on the same playing field as the larger, more prestigious companies, which all have housing that supports their academies,” Cisneros-Legate says.

The apartments are fully furnished, in a walkable area and near public transportation. Rent is fixed between $650 and $700 monthly, including utilities.

Though other academies have housing, Gunning says Ballet West’s stands out among the competition.

“The Hamburg Ballet School has a boarding school that was developed more for younger students,” he says. “It was a great option for kids traveling without parents, who needed somewhere with guidance.”

While Ballet West does have some younger students living in its apartment building, there are a variety of living options to choose from. Gunning lives in a shared apartment, which has helped introduce him to other dancers while encouraging his independence. Having this housing option made Gunning’s move back to the U.S. considerably easier.

“Just the existence of this building made moving again a much smaller ask,” Gunning continues. “There are more strict rules for foreigners looking for housing in the U.S., and we can easily get tangled up in U.S. guarantor requirements. … I’m very grateful that Ballet West offered me a place here. There really wasn’t too much to arrange.”

Photo by Laura Seitz | Ballet West rehearses for the 2023 production of “The Nutcracker."

Ballet West’s housing isn’t just for students coming from across the globe, though. Taylor says many people living in the apartments are from neighboring states or are students just trying to avoid a commute.

“Anyone who is a student at Ballet West can live here,” she says. “We have a few that used to drive up from Utah County to our Salt Lake location that now live in the apartments.”

Taylor hints that the construction isn’t stopping at housing.

“Other ballet academies at this level are often coastal,” she says. “We’re a regional hub here in Salt Lake, but we’re not stopping there. … We’re exploring additional expansion of our campuses, both within Utah and outside of the state.”

Dreams take center stage

In the meantime, Taylor says Ballet West has made a serious commitment to making dance more equitable.

“We’ve already eliminated a lot of the costs associated with dance education, from performance and costume fees to ticket obligations,” she says. “Expanding general financial aid and scholarships are a big part of how we plan to grow and continue to support our community.”

That attitude also stood out from all of Gunning’s other dance academies.

“Favoritism in dance is common,” Gunning says. “People will often only work with and invest in their favorites. But at Ballet West, they see potential in all of us. The faculty and artistic staff go out of their way to ensure that everyone here gets a chance at the same level of education. I love it when [dance is] collegial. Even though we do it by ourselves, dance is not a solo art.”

At Ballet West, Gunning says he and the other international students he’s talked to felt immediately accepted. Most of all, he’s been struck by how many dancers want to stay involved in the academy even after their training and onstage careers are complete. 

“Even when their dance career is over, they find a different role within the organization,” Gunning says. “That, to me, is the most telling thing about the work environment—people not only want to be here, but they want to stay here. There is true loyalty.”

That’s just not the case at most academies, Gunning continues, claiming it isn’t uncommon for companies to switch artistic directors every year. But Ballet West’s reputation was built in direct opposition to that status quo, Taylor says.

“Our artistic director Adam Sklute created, dare I say, a friendly company,” she says. “Everyone is so excited to work and participate, and those positive experiences really last.”

While dance careers can be volatile and constantly in flux, Gunning says that if it were up to him, he’d stay in Utah for a long time.

“Dance education and careers take up your whole life,” he says. “You’re friends with dancers, you live with dancers, you’re always talking and thinking about dance. Living this life in the right environment was and is very important to me. I found it at Ballet West.”

Photo of Jessica Wiarda by Jessica Ethington

Earlier this year, Hopi-Tewa artist Jessica Wiarda coordinated and launched Utah’s first Indigenous Fashion Week. In 2024, she’s doubling down.

The idea for the event was initially sparked in casual conversation. “The Navajo Nation has their own fashion week,” Wiarda says. “One of my friends suggested offhand that we do that same thing here, but with the mix of community members living in Salt Lake City.”

Wiarda told her friend group that she was serious about hosting a fashion week, and the name alone was all it took to get people on board. 

“Immediately, there were volunteers,” Wiarda says. “Friends called friends who called other friends, and soon we had models, designers, artists—even an emcee. It got bigger and bigger completely organically.”

Opportunities for self-expression

When Crystal Loya, a Redhouse Diné designer, was asked to participate in Indigenous Fashion Week, she had just finished some dresses and completed some beadwork from the powwows she’d attended, she says. Initially, Loya assumed she’d be designing for other models—but then Wiarda asked her to represent herself.

“I was shy at first, just humbled to be a part of something like this,” Loya says. “As I walked, my shyness turned into, ‘Okay, I got this, this is me. This is my take on powwow: a contemporary northern traditional cloth dancer.’ After it was all done, I was proud. Proud of myself, as an Indigenous woman. Proud to participate, then get elevated to showcase in an all-Native fashion show. Proud to support and elevate the Native community here on the Wasatch Front.” 

Though her mother loves to sew, Loya didn’t pick up the skill until a middle school home economics class, where she learned to work the machines.

“[My mother] gave me the work ethic of, ‘If you want it done, do it yourself,’ and that’s [become] my motto for when I can’t find something already pre-made or that fits,” she says. “That has led me down a path of making my own regalia.”

Not every volunteer was an experienced designer, though. Wiarda says many people she called were creating clothes and modeling for the first time.

“All of our models had never modeled before,” she says. “People were really inspired, and I think they just trusted me.”

Photos by Gabriel Rutherford

The Leonardo had confidence in Wiarda, too, allowing her to reserve a space with a cap of 250 attendees. The tickets sold out in a weekend.

“People were still coming to the front desk trying to get tickets the day of,” Wiarda says. 

A gathering of nations

Wiarda was selected as the Utah Diné Bikéyah’s Artist in Residence in 2022, and she used the remainder of her stipend to fund the fashion week. Ticket sales covered the rest of the expenses—Wiarda ran everything without sponsorships or external funding.

In 2024, that’s going to change.

“We already have sponsorships lined up,” she says, even before having the exact date, location or even artists nailed down. 

Wiarda largely credits the event’s success to creating a feeling of belonging. At the first fashion week, half a dozen tribes—including Hopi, Navajo (Diné), Ute, Northern Ute, Apache and Anishinaabe Ojibwe—were represented.

“One of the elders described it as ‘a gathering of nations,’” Wiarda says. “I felt really good about that. It didn’t matter what tribe you were from at this event. We are Indigenous.”

That’s an especially rare feeling in Utah, she continues.

“As an Indigenous person in the state, you know people like you exist, but we’re rarely brought together in one place. The whole night was full of people gasping, ‘I didn’t know you’d be here!’ and hugging and making friends. It made me realize that we’re more connected than we might feel. We have a huge community.”

Not all the attendees were Indigenous, though. Wiarda encouraged people from all backgrounds to buy a ticket.

“It’s hard to create safe spaces for people to consume culturally specific content,” she says. “That’s the way our social climate is now. People are afraid to ask questions. I think this is especially true in Utah, where one culture is dominant.”

This social climate has snowballed into what Wiarda calls a “misunderstanding about ‘Indian Art’” here in the state.

“When I was working at a booth at Craft Lake City, I’d see white couples say they couldn’t buy my work because it would be appropriation,” she says. “You can buy these Native-made garments because they’re marketed toward you. Something that is specific to a certain tribe is a different story, but in general, we don’t want to rope ourselves off.”

Crystal Loya | Photo by Neil Larson

Expanding horizons

That welcoming attitude is now materializing as a large event. In 2024, Wiarda says she hopes to sell 500 tickets.

“I don’t know what ‘realistic’ is anymore,” she says. “I thought 250 would be a stretch.”

With the luxury of more than five weeks to plan and secure sponsorships, Wiarda says she’s putting everything into making 2024’s Indigenous Fashion Week worthy of a doubled attendance number. So far the agenda includes additions such as a separate art market where designers can present and discuss their work before selling it, a series of smaller fashion shows instead of one large one, and an artist feature series.

As a designer, Loya wants to step up her game, too.

“It would be pretty cool to bust out a line for next year’s walk from regalia to everyday wear,” she says. “The regalia would need to be hand-picked—I don’t just sew outfits for anybody. It’s a rite of passage, regalia in the powwow world. I sew and bead for the ones who have no one [to do it for them].”

An everyday wear line would be an even bigger lift for Loya, and she estimates the cost of materials to be high.

“I’m only one person beading, sewing, sourcing fabrics and supplies,” she says. “The challenge would be epic but so worth the end result.”

Empowering the next generation

This kind of celebration has been generations in the making, Wiarda says.

“A lot of Indigenous communities are really reserved when it comes to sharing anything,” she continues. “If you go back to my grandparents’, or even my parents’ generation, they were punished harshly for speaking their language, for expressing themselves in clothing or hair. This new generation, we inherited that trauma, but it’s not something we’ve experienced. We’re not as afraid anymore.”

Throughout the process of creating Indigenous Fashion Week, Wiarda says the biggest lesson she’s learned is the importance of self-confidence.

“You might think you’re not ready to show your artwork, to start designing something, to try anything new,” she says. “But if you want something, you should do it. I’ve seen first-hand how possible your dreams can be.”

Photo courtesy of Gardner Group

Draper, Utah will be the home of the state’s first mass timber-constructed commercial building.

The five-story Baltic Pointe building will be the new home of Pelion Venture Partners and the office furniture firm HB Workplaces. The project is led by Gardner Group, a Utah commercial real estate firm with hundreds of construction sites throughout the West. This is the first time they’re using mass timber. 

“Traditionally, multi-story buildings have used steel and concrete flooring,” says Tracy Harden, SVP of marketing at AEI Consultants and a marketing communications consultant for Gardner Group. “Both of those industries are very carbon-intensive. Together, they contribute [up] to 11 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.”

Harden says those emission numbers drove the decision to trailblaze mass timber construction in the state. “For someone like Christian Gardner, who really wants to take the lead in sustainable building in the commercial sector, mass timber is the obvious alternative building material,” she explains.

Creating wonder out of waste

Building with mass timber means utilizing what is often dismissed as “waste wood” or scraps of various types of trees. The pieces are glued together to create the materials used in construction. The result is a building that acts like a tree—because it is. Mass timber buildings can sequester carbon and convert it into oxygen, bringing that 11 percent to near zero. 

Liza Hart, senior development manager and VP of design and sustainability at Gardner Group, says these mass timber buildings also have fire-protective qualities that surpass even steel and concrete. “Fireproof spray has to be applied to other materials,” she says. “But wood develops a char on the outermost layer … [keeping] the rest of the wood intact.”

Photo courtesy of Gardner Group

Beauty is yet another major benefit, Harden says.

“Biophilic design principles say that if you bring … more natural elements into your living space, productivity, concentration and overall physical and mental health will improve,” she says. By using mass timber, Baltic Pointe—with its wooden interiors and mountain views—aligns with biophilic design.

“The hope was that we have an asset that’s more marketable, will attract better tenants and retain them longer,” Hart says. “In a market where offices are struggling, we believe our mass timber interior will help as a market differentiator.”

A sustainable pathway

Still, despite the long list of benefits, sustainable building may be far from mass adoption.

Photo courtesy of Gardner Group

“[Mass timber] is a new material [in Utah],” Harden says. “Until this project, we didn’t know—could we build a commercial building? There were many upfront costs to [learning] if mass timber would be economically viable.”

Hart says some of the holdup was institutional.

“After the Industrial Revolution, once we went to steel and concrete for commercial buildings, we just stopped using mass timber,” she says. “Building codes forgot about the material and stopped studying it. Our codes had to catch up again with the building science.”

Gardner Group hopes Baltic Pointe will showcase what can happen when you build sustainably and that their leadership will be enough to tip the scales in favor of the environment.

“Everyone needs a leader,” Harden says. “We were the first adopter. We took the gamble on it and proved the viability.”

Since embarking on the Baltic Pointe project, the Inflation Reduction Act introduced new tax incentives for embodied carbon—defined by the Carbon Leadership Forum as “the greenhouse gas emissions arising from the manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance and disposal of building materials.” Hart believes these tax benefits will play in mass timber’s favor.

“Incentives will help offset some of these upfront costs,” she says. “And we’ve seen a lot more green financing from banks, all of which will help to broaden adoption in the marketplace.”

In the meantime, Gardner Group continues to add to its wish list of mass timber projects.

“Most apartments and homes are ‘stick builds,’ which means they’re already built from wood,” Hart says. “But we’d love to use mass timber on a high-rise multi-family building or other commercial projects. Those are the things we’re working toward."

During her time as mayor, Niehaus was part of a project to develop an app for Arches National Park.

“Arches was seeing some extreme overcrowding, both in the parking lot and at the entrance booth, [so we] built a ticket system with slots for entry.”

The public responded loud and clear: No, thank you.

“Man, it was as if Arches was stabbing Moab in the gut,” she says. “‘Why would you do this,’ ‘No one is going to come anymore’ and ‘This is going to be a disaster,’ were thrown around a lot.”

In reality, the app and messaging made the entrance much more organized. Niehaus says visitors overwhelmingly reported a more positive experience since the technology integration. Eventually, the locals came around.

But on the heels of the project’s success, Niehaus couldn’t put the idea down. She continued to think about how technology could solve more long-standing problems.

“All of the traffic along I-15 and how much money we as a state throw at expansion,” she explains. “I felt like we could do more with transportation and technology.”

Serendipitously, that was something Mark Pittman, CEO of Blyncsy, was thinking about, too.

Their program, Payver, combines dashcam footage with machine learning to track changes and declines in infrastructure.

“We buy the imagery from semi-trucks, Amazon delivery vehicles,” he says. “A lot of vehicles are equipped with dashcams now.”

“A lot” is just over 400,000. They each provide real-time data that the company then processes.

“We’re looking for roadkill, debris, signs that are damaged, streetlights that are out,” Pittman lists. “We’re looking for the presence of sidewalks, trash on the streets.”

Payver’s main goal is to escalate good decision making.

“Data is the new asphalt,” Pittman says. “It’s one thing for law enforcement to say, ‘Gosh, this is the fourth or fifth accident here. Maybe we should try to restructure this.’ That’s reactionary. We want to be proactive.”

Larger cities like New York City have started to use the technology to great benefit, Pittman says. But while it may seem best suited for packed sidewalks and all-day traffic jams, rural communities are often in need of such insight—especially in Utah.

“The Wasatch Front gets most of the funding and most of the attention because they have most of the people,” Niehaus says. “Yet rural Utah fuels the Wasatch Front in things as simple as recreation but also more complex issues like water, food, agriculture, tools and materials.”

Pittman says rural communities like Moab deal especially with the cleanliness of their roads.

“These stretches of highway see more litter because people driving through assume it’s the middle of nowhere,” he says. “‘I can throw my trash out the window, it doesn’t matter,’ but there are people that live here. It’s their community being impacted in ways that, without this technology, the greater state would never see.”

According to Niehaus, “5,000 people live [in Moab], but 5 million visit.” That’s why the quality of the roads is a huge decider in tourism dollars, Pittman says.

“Most of the area surrounding us is a two-lane highway,” he says. “If something happens in one of those lanes, the whole freeway is shut down, and you can’t really get out. Over near Salt Lake, we have multiple ways you can connect to side streets or connect to different freeways, but out there, there’s only one way in and one way out.”Payver has been able to track down cracked roads and dangerous turns to help ease traffic jams in the area. The greatest concern for Niehaus, though, is the safety of her city’s visitors and residents.

“It takes a long time for roadside service workers to get out here,” she says. “If I hit a pothole and damage my tire, we can be stranded on the side of the road for hours.”

A turning point in the argument for technology integration was a fatal accident at the turnout of Arches National Park.

“There was just a stop sign, and it made left-hand turns very difficult,” Niehaus says. “A car collided with another trying to make a turn, and our hospital didn’t have the capacity to deal with that level of trauma. People think that every hospital has emergency rooms and ICUs or doctors on staff who are able to perform heart surgeries. That just isn’t the case for Moab.”

After the accident, the CEO of Moab’s hospital called UDOT to request a traffic light at the intersection, which was eventually granted.

“We spent a lot of money in that spot, and still, we had to have a life lost before action was taken,” she says. “We wanted a new approach—what Payver was doing.”

Niehaus anticipated resistance to another city-wide adaption of technology. But of course, even with the town on her side, there were bigger issues.

“Change is a big issue,” she says. “Like we’ve seen, people are often hesitant to accept any big shifts. But let’s be honest—money is where, pun intended, the rubber hits the road.”

Traditionally, engineering firms charge upwards of $200 per mile to monitor such large swaths of road, Pittman says. These assessments occur every five years, leaving lots of wiggle room for certain sites to turn unmanageable. And with nearly 100,000 miles of highway throughout the state, the cost can quickly become burdensome.

“More urban environments may have the cash to enter into deals like that,” Pittman says. “But as temperatures get more extreme, as we get more and more snow, as EVs (which are much heavier than gas-fueled cars) hit the road, our infrastructure gets run down faster. That’s the case for everyone everywhere, whether or not they can afford that price tag.”

Pittman says that’s why making assessment technology like Payver accessible for all types of communities was one of Blyncsy’s top priorities.

“We charge less than $20 per mile to do the same analysis and tracking,” he says.

When all communities can maintain their roads, the benefits aren’t isolated.

“It is more expensive to completely rebuild roads,” he says. “While some might balk at the idea of putting up a lot of money upfront, thinking long-term saves everyone tax revenue in the long haul. Then, municipalities can use their budgets on other programs and things that also serve their communities, all while having safer roads.”

Moab is proof that such applications can work in the state of Utah, Niehaus says. She’s confident in mass adoption in the coming years—it will require just “a little evangelizing.”

“With the partnerships between politicians and good leadership at the state level, I think we’ve satisfied that part of the work,” Niehaus says. “But we need the business community to speak up and demand that data be the new asphalt. They’re the ones shipping the goods and transporting the services. Business owners need to know that a company like Blyncsy is doing this work and that it’s been successful in communities like mine. We should be demanding that their technology be used on a larger scale.”

The outdated capabilities are compounded by another problem looming over the mining industry: the number of engineers able to use the “overly complex” software is rapidly diminishing.

“We’re not seeing the number of mine planning engineers graduating from colleges that we need to in order to keep up as is,” Echavarria says.

Those few that do enter the field are immediately bogged down by months of software training, she says.

“They’re spending most of their time learning this outdated software rather than doing the job,” she adds. “Every job may have a slightly different use of the software, making the learning process last too long.”

Opencontour’s solution is simplification. Instead of a hodgepodge of tools and capabilities spread across a variety of software all siloed from one another, Opencontour is a one-stop-shop software, including everything from mine scheduling to cost-benefit scenario outputs. For companies, that means buying one license (on a per-seat basis) instead of four or five.

Innovating the mining landscape wasn’t always on Echavarria’s to-do list. Her background is almost as far away as you can get—she’s spent the last 15 years managing call centers and debt collection agencies. However, she says her work experience is not as unrelated as you may think.

“I’ve always been very interested in working in and with industries that are overlooked, that require innovation yet have very little of it,” she says. “Call centers and debt collection, like mining, all fit into that category for me; they have an important place in our economies and society, but they’re often ignored.”

Echavarria says she sees improvement as a personal responsibility.

“I have two goals: externally, I want to help show that these industries are more than their reputation,” she says. “Internally, I want to influence the strategies we take to ultimately make better decisions.”

When it comes to mining, Echavarria immediately saw room for improvement in sustainability practices.

“The way to reduce the mining industry’s negative environmental impacts is through software innovation,” she says.

When she graduated with her executive MBA in 2021 from the University of Utah, she enrolled in a second master’s program, the Master of Business Creation, and joined the team to help take Opencontour to market.

Opencontour is specifically for open-pit, or “opencast,” mining—the most common and disruptive form of mining. The process involves removing the top layers of earth and rock over a wide swath of land in order to reach the extraction target, often rock or minerals. The result is a massive, often circular hole, narrowing as it deepens to form a funnel-like shape.

The largest open-pit copper mine isn’t too far from Opencontour’s offices; the Kennecott Copper Mine just outside Salt Lake City holds the record at nearly a mile deep and 2.5 miles wide (big enough to see from space).Creating open-pit mines like this often means generating waste rock while also polluting the air and endangering plant and animal life in the impacted areas. The Kennecott mine isn’t a stranger to that kind of fall-out either; in 2014, the area suffered landslides at the site, triggering multiple earthquakes.

“It’s a big expense on the land even if done correctly,” Echavarria says. “And making mistakes can be costly not only to your company but to the surrounding environment.”

That’s where Opencontour’s planning technology really kicks in.

“Engineers using our software can design the overall mine face and schedule of the project, of course,” she says. “But what makes us very unique is the ability to run multiple iterations on a plan and truly evaluate different scenarios against a variety of factors, including net present value.”

Such versatility means that open-pit mining projects can be executed more efficiently, not only speeding up the project’s total time but also allowing the planning team more opportunities to take safer and smarter routes.

“The number of variables we can run through using our software in 20 minutes has, in the past, taken similar teams four-plus hours,” Echavarria says. “That doesn’t leave room to see every option and can lead to sacrifice.”

Though their current focus is on open-pit mining, Echavarria says Opencontour has eggs in every basket. If it’s making mining more environmentally friendly, she says a new methodology for their software isn’t off the table.

They’ve already started leaning in, notably through heap leaching, a chemical extraction process.

“In 2019, we partnered with a group in Colorado that used this method to obtain ore,” she says. “Heap leaching didn’t have a software capable of modeling the process or managing the solution inventory or metal extraction until our product was released. This group needed help understanding the recovery of cost and tracking everything that was happening on-site. Using the Opencontour technology, like with open-pit mining, we’re able to significantly reduce the costs just by leveraging our existing tools.”

Echavarria says they’ve extended into a third kind of mining, vertical extraction, as well. Contrary to the open-pit style, vertical-extraction mining drills directly down into the ground—“it’s basically borehole drilling,” Echavarria explains.

“Vertical extraction is an example of the new mining technology that we’re staying on top of,” she says. “We’re working with different companies to support them as they work toward less invasive projects. Here, instead of having large expanses of land taken up by a mine, there are instead small holes where ore can be extracted and then filled again straight away.”

Echavarria says Opencontour is the first of its kind on many mining planning projects, often without competition. The industry, she says, was content to stay complacent.

“It’s very costly to overhaul your software at all, even more so to one from the cloud,” she says. “So internally, there is that barrier to change. But the bigger roadblock to innovation in mining is external; the focus in recent years has been on looking for alternatives altogether.”

Scattering the spotlight meant mining processes on all fronts slugged along as they were: outdated and unsustainable.

“To make a change, we really had to push,” Echavarria says. “It is a matter of priority.”

So far, being a first mover seems to have paid off. While Opencontour has not raised any external capital yet, it has successfully launched to market through profit from software licensing.

“It’s all been organic growth,” she says. “We have existing clients here in the US and also in South America, and we plan to continue to scale up.”

Echavarria is confident that the more engineers hear about Opencontour’s capabilities, the more will sign on.

“We’re expanding the solutions we offer every day,” she says. “We plan to include short-range planning soon for projects that require that kind of approach. Overall, we’re committed to introducing this new methodology for mine planning, where engineers, no matter the project, can reduce the time and complexity in their day-to-day while also making their work safer for the miners and the environment.”

Despite all the success they’ve found, founding the IOHA wasn’t anyone’s original plan. 

Jonathan Bennion, one of IOHA’s co-founders and the host of many of their videos, was a pre-med student at the University of Utah when he took a job teaching anatomy at the Utah College of Massage Therapy.

“I’d teach lectures down there and then take them up to the cadaver lab [on campus],” Bennion says. “When the relationship between the University of Utah and the college [was] terminated, the students were in a borderline uprising. Not many massage schools in the country get [lab experience].”

Bennion says he fielded messages from students for a year, all of whom were looking for a cadaver lab opportunity.

“Then one day at home, I was like, ‘Maybe I should start my own cadaver lab,’ because that’s a normal idea to have,” Bennion laughs. “The first person that popped into my mind was my brother-in-law, Jeremy [Jones]. He’s an entrepreneur and has managed a lot of businesses, and I had no idea how to start.”

Bennion decided to give Jones a call. 

“When he said he wanted to start a cadaver lab, man, my entire thought process just shifted gears,” Bennion says. “I never thought that was going to come out of his mouth. But the concept alone was fascinating on so many different levels that it was immediately of interest to me.”

Jones, taking on the titles of co-founder and executive director, started making phone calls of his own from lab spaces across the valley to obtain licenses from city and state departments.

“Nobody knew what to tell me,” Jones says. “Nobody had any idea how a private business would do this because, at that point, there did not exist a private human cadaver lab in the state. They were all affiliated with a university.”

Eventually, IOHA found a home at a high school—Granite Technical Institute (GTI) in South Salt Lake.

From 2013 to 2019, Bennion taught anatomy classes at the lab for smaller colleges that didn’t have those resources. As part of their deal with GTI, they also invited high school students to the lab.

“We were kind of a match made in heaven,” Bennion says. “It’s fun to teach students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to learn about anatomical awesomeness.”

The cadavers the lab started with—and still use today—come from a donor program partnership. “We lease bodies and serve as their custodians for a period of time,” Jones says. “We still use my truck that I use to go camping [to pick up cadavers].”

It was all new territory for Bennion and Jones, and eventually, they saw a need to bring on more staff. Bennion had met Justin Cottle while teaching at Utah College of Massage Therapy and brought him onto the team to help teach courses. For both men, while they were making money from the courses and paying little overhead to the school, IOHA was still part-time work—until TikTok.

“I started looking for side hustles and got into digital marketing,” Cottle says. “I didn’t have any experience with social media; it was something I knew could make money…so I was like, let’s just figure this out.”

Cottle funneled his free time into the up-and-coming platform.

“At the time, the app was nothing but prank videos and dancing,” Cottle says. “We were one of the very first educators to use the platform, and it was slow going. We thought this might be a good opportunity to try and jump into an app that was less established. I had a good feeling about it, but it was also just a shot in the dark.”

Their biggest challenge, Bennion says, was content. “We’d always been bouncing around the idea of going online,” he continues. “But we wondered how to navigate it and how to stay true to our cause to respect body donations.”

The team found success when Cottle decided to cut out the middleman.

“I reached out to ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok because we have a lot of respect for the cadavers,” he says.

Cottle put together an IOHA sample video and sent it off for review. Within an hour, a representative from the company reached out and committed to helping them find a place on the app. 

“We got approval from TikTok itself and their creative team before we put content out there,” Cottle says. “Again, we didn’t want people to be scrolling by dance video, dance video, dance video, human heart, dance video—we wanted to get it right.”

Cottle posted their first TikTok in November 2019, right before sitting down to dinner. When he logged back on that night, IOHA’s only video had 500,000 views. The next morning, it was in the millions.

Since then, IOHA’s view count (and following) has only grown. Cottle has remained in contact with the ByteDance team, going back and forth on different types of short-form video he could post while remaining within the content guidelines and holding respect for donors and their loved ones.

As the IOHA team has expanded to new platforms, they’ve managed to dodge content restrictions—for the most part.

“There have been frustrations,” Bennion qualifies. “TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and now Snapchat all have different lines for what they deem appropriate. Justin and I will have moments where we’re like, ‘Why is that video monetized when they’re dropping F-bombs left and right?’ Then we’re showing a human heart in a lesson about a heart attack and we’re [de-monetized].” 

It’s not just algorithms flagging their content. Bennion says that comment sections can be bogged down by people questioning the morality of their posts.“We have people say, ‘Wow, that’s somebody’s mom,’ critiquing our use of real cadavers in videos, suggesting that what we’re doing is wrong,” he says.

At first, IOHA’s team would respond directly in the comments explaining their approach to education and how cadavers are used—”No identifying features are ever shown,” and so on. As their audience grew, however, they found that their comment sections became self-regulated.

“Our own audience comes in and answers those questions now,” he says. “You can see people go in and explain how beneficial this is and the value we’re giving back. We have one body that has literally educated millions and millions—we’re talking like 30 million-plus people. That’s incredible.”

Those conversations aren’t small potatoes for IOHA. Jones says most of their earnings (and profit) come from behind the screen.

IOHA has multiple income streams: renting the lab out to educational organizations and companies; in-person lab revenue from teaching their own courses; and what Jones calls “social media”—AdSense, brand deals and endorsements and creator funds.

In 2019, in-person revenue accounted for 100 percent of IOHA income. At the end of 2022, in-person revenue was 2.3 percent of their income.

“The way things are going, I think that’s going to be down to under 1 percent at the end of 2023,” Jones says.

That steady stream of internet income isn’t as easy to come by as you might think, Bennion cautions.

“People look at social media giants and think they’re lucky,” he says. “But they work like crazy—it is hard work! You’re always dropping videos. Justin dropped one the other day, and as soon as it’s posted, he’s gotta get ready for the next one. There’s a little bit of the grind there.” 

That’s also when IOHA’s complete transition from medical laboratory to content production company will likely be realized.

“We value people coming in, but having more people physically occupy our lab means that Jonathan and Justin can’t be filming and creating content,” Jones adds.

The team plans to expand into more courses and accreditations, all of which will be available online.

“When we first started this lab, there were absolutely restrictions around who could access it and who could come and take courses,” Bennion says. “We can do courses where everything is behind a firewall, so you have to be a qualified applicant and deploy those [same restrictions] through the digital format.” 

While it’s a bit farther from the point Bennion started at, the priority shift toward virtual-friendly content is one guided by the desire to reach more people—and padded by economics.

“We started this entire thing to teach people,” Jones says. “We’ve got people globally watching our content. I have moms saying, ‘My five-year-old son is absolutely fascinated with your channel and he wants to be a doctor now,’ all the way up to 70-year-olds asking questions about their own health. The [income] makes it comfortable, but the results and the people we are touching make it absolutely fulfilling.”

Still, Bennion says social media fame and the pressures to move all their resources to the virtual world will never fully replace the lab’s in-person components.

“We’ve had moments where we go back to our in-person class after filming for hours, and it’s the most fun thing ever to see these students with their eyes are popping out of their heads because they’re so excited,” he says. “Those in-person classes can be grounding, humbling reminders of why we did this. There are multiple reasons to keep them, and I think it keeps us true to who we were originally.”

Regardless of the format, the goal always has been and always will be about education for IOHA.

“We’re a little bit cheesy, but we say that the lab is way more about life than it is about death,” Bennion says. “I truly believe that because people will come in there and learn from these amazing anatomical gifts and then go out and help the living.” 

Stanza—a startup officially launched in St. George, Utah, late last year—functions similarly to the Airbnb model. Acting as the go-between, Stanza connects empty offices with individuals or teams looking for space through flexible contracts.

“I love the empowerment of employees,” he says. “I love seeing companies that let people work from home in a way that’s effective for that individual. But that empowerment should also mean that these companies offer good in-office experiences, too—whatever an employee’s calculus is for a good workday, that option should be accessible to them.”

For work like that, Riley says single offices and private rooms for four-member teams were in the highest demand. Most transactions for spaces of that size were arranged via KSL, Craigslist or other peer-to-peer sites that Riley says the consumers he spoke to weren’t ecstatic about.

“It’s unreasonably hard to find the kind of spaces they want,” Riley says. “Especially if you don’t want to sign long-term contracts. They’re too small to compel a traditional real estate agent or broker’s help, but doing it on your own can be a little fishy." 

Satisfied that he had a customer base (or “users” in the Airbnb model), Riley went in search of “hosts” or vacant office spaces to rent out.

“That’s when I got really discouraged,” he says. “Every commercial real estate office broker that I spoke with told me there was no empty space. ‘Bursting at the seams’ is a phrase I heard a lot.”

Up and down the state, Riley says he got the same reports. Post-pandemic, real estate was back on the rise.

Publicly available data agrees. In 2022, Colliers reported Utah County—one of Riley’s target demographics, considering Silicon Slopes—as dropping in vacancy rates quarter over quarter. For the county, the report predicts “vacancy rates [to] significantly decrease” into the new year.

Closer to home, Southern Utah reported even more dire news for Stanza: vacancy rates for offices and other commercial space dropped below one percent.

After seeing numbers like that, Riley says the idea for Stanza was nearly scrapped. The three-dimensional model requires buy-in from users and hosts, and with only the middleman really engaged, Riley knew the business model couldn’t hold water.

Still, something drew him to toss in one more last-ditch effort. He decided to go see the spaces for himself.

“It was literally just me walking into these office buildings, knocking on doors,” he says. “That’s when I discovered that there’s a data smokescreen problem. The macro-level of commercial real estate data suggests something entirely different than the truth.”

When vacancy rates are reported, Riley says, the information communicated is how much available square footage there is to rent. If there’s an existing lease or signed contract, that space is marked as “occupied” when, in truth, the whole company could be working from home.

“I walked into spaces where, technically, every corner is full,” Riley says. “The box is checked. This is a leased space, right? But the offices are empty. The lights are off, and no one is sitting at those desks.”

In conversation with the lessees, Riley found that many office spaces entered long-term leases just before the pandemic.

“Those leases were a great idea at the time,” he says, “but now half their team is remote, and they’re saddled with monthly payments for a giant, empty building.”

For some companies, breaking those leases wasn’t a legal option. For others, retaining the space for employees who wanted to work from the office—and for clients who wanted to stop by—was a necessity. Both camps, though, were strapped for cash.“The response to leasing a room or two of their spaces was positive and immediate,” Riley says. “If they could make $200 a month to put toward the lease, that’s great. If they could make $1,000, even better—really, anything greater than zero was a compelling proposition for them.”

Freeing up the “hijacked” spaces for use by more flexible teams played effectively for both sides. An unexpected byproduct of Stanza’s deals was the response from the real estate agents who had shooed Stanza initially.

“Every person in this puzzle was in a bind,” Riley says. “These agents know the situations their tenants are in with massive leases and empty buildings, but they couldn’t do much to help. With Stanza, the space is utilized, the lease feels more worthwhile, and their conversations with tenants are easier.” 

“As we expected, there’s a huge variety of requests,” Riley says. “Some of these users want a handful of rooms long-term. Other users want a conference room for one day, then an office or two the next.”

That’s one of Stanza’s big differentiators from coworking spaces.

“Places like Kiln and WeWork, we see them as ecosystem partners,” Riley says. “We’re a partner for both hosts and users. We’re matchmakers, and we’re happy to work with co-working spaces as hosts for their facilities and offerings.”

While coworking spaces are typically a closed network of branded properties, Stanza lets you choose a location close to home or switch up the building you’re in whenever your team wants. While Riley says he himself has used Kiln’s space as a quiet place to get his own work done, there’s a population looking for more flexibility that coworking isn’t speaking to.

“We don’t see them as a competitive force,” Riley says. “They’re a cooperative force filling in the opportunities for people who want that kind of working environment. We’re here to bridge the gap that’s left.”

The size of the service gap has been surprising, even after Riley’s on-the-ground research. He says all his clientele have come exclusively through word-of-mouth—none of Stanza’s budget has gone into marketing or advertising of any kind.

He’s been building an impressive waitlist in the meantime, too.

“From just existing, we’ve received requests for Stanza’s involvement in Seattle and Portland, Lehi and Provo, Las Vegas, Chicago, even as far out as Milwaukee,” he says. “We’ve identified this abundant middle-ground of real estate, and it’s become a sort of Wild West.”

As Stanza nurtures its existing relationships, Riley plans to exploit the burgeoning economy in a seed round.

“We’re totally self-funded right now,” Riley says. “But with our momentum and the way things are trending, investors are the next step. We’re confident in our information and our user and host bases to take Stanza out there.”

Expansion for Riley means moving out of state, yes, but also diversifying their host options into vacant spaces. It’s the difference between an Airbnb renting out a basement versus an entire home, he says.

Stanza’s initial hosting properties are all spaces otherwise occupied by other companies. Each includes furnishings provided by the existing tenant with standard resources like monitors, desks, and Wi-Fi.

“We’re planning to move into office buildings that are totally empty,” he says, “And help monetize the space for the landlords until they can find long-term leases.”

Ultimately, through expansion, Riley’s goal with Stanza is to empower employees to pick a space that is most effective for them at any given time.

“We want to help people,” he says. “That’s why we’re in this. You should have the kind of working environment you need regardless of where you live. We’re the middleman to get you there.” 

Today, resources—especially power and energy—are spread across cities and counties. Walkingshaw faced that problem head-on with his family farm.

“I couldn’t find a regenerative battery that could support our conifer trees,” he says. When he ran out of existing options, he decided he could build his own. 

Two years later, Walkingshaw did leave with a better battery—and Torus, a company with what he says is an oft-searched answer to the climate change crisis. 

“It’s de-carbonization,” he says. “That’s the solution.”

Of course, Walkingshaw says he’s not the first to identify mass decarbonization as a way out of the climate crisis. Where his first-mover advantage kicks in, however, is his approach to getting there.

“As I started pulling at these threads during my research, I thought, ‘How have we not solved this?’” Walkingshaw says. “I found that the complexity of the problem has been playing against finding the right solution. There are lots of energy storage manufacturers just making hardware, then you have carbon credit companies who build beautiful software. But they’re all missing a part. We needed a unified user experience.”

Walkingshaw says the energy problem has three prongs: the generation of renewable energy, its effective storage and the longevity of the two.

That’s where the Torus Station comes in—a renewable power generator that can capture power from solar, wind or hydro sources, store that power and help you track and manage its usage.

“The product is only mined once, has a 30-year service life, and it’s 95 percent recyclable when it finally does need to be retired,” Walkingshaw says. “So not only is it solving the problem, but you get these systemic benefits, too.”

It’s all thanks to a flywheel energy storage device developed and connected to an energy storage inverter by Walkingshaw and his team. That hardware is first installed in your front yard before it’s linked to software that supports the Torus phone app.

“[Our solution] is hardware and software, and it’s direct-to-consumer,” Walkingshaw says. “We took a kit of parts and decided to integrate it, engineering the last mile, the inverter, to finally fully integrate the pieces.”

Involving the consumer directly through the app is one of Torus’ hallmarks.

“A lot of products in the space like to say, ‘We can change your behavior,’” he says. “But that’s a really hard thing to do. Instead of trying to force your hand, we put an emphasis on education. We want you to know where your power is coming from, how it’s stored, and how you’re using it. Once you have a real understanding, it’s over. You’ll naturally start being more conscious, and that eventually leads to total decarbonization.”

When he realized that connecting the dots among those three solutions would lead to something like Torus, Walkingshaw says he was moved to tears.

“With those three issues, I thought I was in heaven,” he says.

Walkingshaw started his career as an EMT, using his knowledge of the medical field to launch a medical device company. From there, he hopped from launch to launch, starting and growing companies in the hardware, software and direct-to-consumer spaces.

On all sides of Torus’ development, Walkingshaw recruited the best and brightest from his previous companies, creating what’s basically “The Avengers” of energy storage.

“We’re a very mature team. Everyone has 20-plus years of experience in their functional domain,” he says. “We’ve been able to avoid a lot of the pitfalls that you’d make as an early-stage startup with first-time founders.”

For Walkingshaw, that’s even more of a sign that Torus is where he’s meant to be.

“Torus is a culmination of my life’s work,” he says. “I think it’s all led up to this.”

But it’s about more than just his career. Walkingshaw has four sons, all under the age of 20. They make the issue of climate acutely personal for him.“I think a lot about what their future looks like,” Walkingshaw says. “It’s a very present issue for me. I want to leave the planet better than what [my generation] did to it. I want them to live in a world that doesn’t feel like it’s being threatened all the time.”

Since its launch, consumers have been quick to sign up. Today, Torus has 26 active installations in homes across Utah—a number that Walkingshaw says is much, much smaller than his wait list.

“It’s not a sales problem,” he says. “The demand is here—there’s no concern about that.”

Instead, he says it’s the company’s focus on delivering the highest-quality product that’s slowing down rollout.

“What we’re building is very complex,” he says. “Our flywheels are spinning faster than 500 miles per hour, and the speed of sound is just over 700. We’re dealing with some serious stuff here. As we grow, we also want to make sure that our customers are happy with the stability of the product and that it’s continuing to benefit them years past installation.”

Monitoring the use of Torus’ products is one of the reasons it’s operating only in Utah, using its resources to build up rather than build out.

“Historically, where other hardware manufacturers have fallen flat is in their service,” Walkingshaw says.

In contrast, Torus has its own installation crew within the company that will set up the product for you, along with an onboarding team of electron architects that guide customers through the first three months of use.

“From the customer’s discovery to installation to first-time user experience for ongoing use, there are a lot of reasons that we would want to be close by,” he says. “Our proximity means that we don’t get ripped off, and our consumers don’t get ripped off, either. We didn’t want to leave anything to chance.”

So far, he says, so good.

“If we continue on trend, we anticipate 450 installations in Utah this year,” he says.

That’s just phase one. Once Torus hits its benchmark of nearly 500 homes in Utah, the company plans to expand into new states across the U.S.

“Utah has low energy costs and still has an amazing return on investment,” he says. “But if you go to any other state, especially California and Texas, wow…the payback is amazing.”

It’s not just consumers that have championed Torus’ cause. Walkingshaw says government leaders have been quick to offer their support, too.

“Gov. Spencer Cox has been in our camp from day one,” he says. After Torus’ launch, the Republican-led Climate Action Committee reached out to Torus to serve as a keynote speaker at one of their events.

“I was shocked,” Walkingshaw says. “But we’ve seen from Democrats to Republicans to people who are actively climate conscious to those who are concerned—it’s all been tailwinds.”

It’s those increasing levels of public concern that Walkingshaw credits for really launching Torus initially.

“A decade ago, the climate technology we’re using now wasn’t here,” he says. “But even if it was, our same story back then would have us laughed out of the room. You know, ‘What are you talking about, daily decarbonization? Climate change is a myth,’ things like that. But today, people know. They can see what’s going on with their own eyes, and they want to do something about it. We have people’s attention.”

But working in a high-profile industry also means that more and more companies are starting to encroach on Torus’ space. That, Walkingshaw says, is actually welcomed.

“I don’t worry about the competitive landscape issue,” he says. “We were happy to get the ball rolling, but if we move at the same pace we’re at now—or even faster than we’re at now—it will still not even make a dent. We need everyone, all hands on deck, using technology like this. If you’re entering the market, honestly, I ask that you are using the same kind of products, that you’re building a sustainable solution aimed at daily decarbonization.”

Walkingshaw’s hope is that products like Torus can shift our mindset from depending on the grid to viewing it as a last-resort option.

“I think solar and other forms of energy are categorized as emergency backups,” he says. “With the homes we’ve already installed, we’ve seen we can switch the public’s opinion of the two. The vast majority of the time, those homes are running completely independently of the grid. The grid is the backup—and on top of that, they’re saving money on their energy bills. It’s really, really cool to watch.” 

Existing companies are launching their own services all the time, often leaving customers thinking, “Wait, there’s a subscription service for that?”

In the last two years, the NBA partnered with sports startup Buzzer to sell viewership in 10-minute chunks for 99 cents a pop. Ring Alarm launched the Protect Pro plan—$20 per month for additional broadband and replay of recorded footage. BMW tacked on an $18 per month price tag for heated seats.

But these services haven’t always been slam dunks. You might remember (likely as a fever dream) Taco Bell’s subscription service, “The Taco Lover’s Pass,” which launched in January 2022. For ten dollars a month, subscribers were able to redeem “one of seven iconic tacos a day for 30 consecutive days.” While planned for an “extended limited time,” the program is now defunct.

Today, there are multiple apps developed for the sole purpose of helping customers cancel unwanted subscriptions, a sign that “subscription fatigue” is on the rise.

For many, that tide shift is a big enough indicator to stay out of the subscription market. But despite what might be interpreted as writing on the wall, some Utah companies have found that now is the perfect time to start billing monthly.

Goodbye Blue Apron, hello Crumbl

Take Crumbl Cookies, for example. In late 2022, Crumbl Cookies launched the Taste Weekly Subscription, an app-based subscription service. The program allows for a weekly or monthly recurring order featuring your choice of that week’s cookies. Those who use the subscription service can save up to 10 percent off each delivery or carry-out order.

“We seek to offer leading technology,” says Claire Modersitzki, Crumbl’s Utah relations PR strategist. “Our mission is to make the absolute best in-app experience that exists in the food and beverage industry. We work with tech-savvy customers who value ease and simplicity. As a result, this has been a goal to reach for some time for Crumbl.”

While talks of a subscription service have been ongoing since 2019, Modersitzki says the idea didn’t really get traction until late 2021. The hesitation wasn’t from a lack of demand but rather a commitment to deliver a perfect service.

“We wanted to hit that sweet spot of pushing our technology capabilities while delivering an incredible customer experience and supporting our franchises,” adds Jake Moncur, Crumbl’s VP of engineering. “The stars aligned for the Taste Weekly Subscription.”

While the team was building up to that “a-ha” moment, Modersitzki says customers have been asking for the subscription option for a long, long time. Crumbl’s business model already lends itself to that kind of service anyway, Moncur says.

“We knew it would be an interesting service given how unique our weekly offerings are,” Moncur says. “Weekly customers crave ways to make getting their cookies even more simple. Businesses love treating their employees to weekly cookies, and customers love sending their loved ones in faraway places a weekly gift.”

So, when their app technology was up to snuff, it was an easy decision to launch—even if the market was saturated.

“The idea of recurring food deliveries has been around for years,” Modersitzki says. “However, Crumbl entering the food subscription service is unique. Not many companies featuring subscriptions can say their app is top-ranked in the Food & Beverage [category] in the Apple app store.”

The app’s ratings seem to be reflective of customer satisfaction with the program overall. Moncur says thousands of people have signed up for Taste Weekly in the program’s first few weeks.

“It’s met and exceeded all our initial projections,” he says. “We look forward to measuring the longevity and success of this new program.”

And Taco Bell’s fate isn’t foreordained for every chain restaurant. Launched in April 2022, Panera’s “Unlimited Sip Club”—an $11.99 per month fee for unlimited “charged” lemonades, coffee, tea and fountain beverages—is poised to make it through the year.

Goodbye Spotify, hello Treads 

The success and failure of subscription services have less to do with the method of delivery than the delivery itself. Zach Olson, a serial entrepreneur in the subscription space, believes subscriptions aren’t archaic—they’re the future.

“Personally, I think a subscription model could work in just about every industry,” he says. “I’m having a hard time thinking of a product or service that couldn’t work in that world.”

In 2013, Olson founded Bookly, a cash-basis accounting app, as a bookkeeping solution for small businesses. He raised capital from local Utah funds like Kickstart and Park City Angels, eventually selling the company to KPMG in 2018.

After the acquisition, he couldn’t get subscriptions off his mind.

“I have an affinity for recurring [revenue] business models,” Olson says. “Candidly, that project helped turn my focus to antiquated industries that could benefit from the shift that the subscription model provides.”

That’s what led him to launch Treads, his second subscription-based business model. With Treads, he’s not reinventing the wheel—just making it easier to get one delivered to your house.Customers can choose from four different subscription plans priced at $30, $40, $60 and $80 per month. Each plan is what Olson calls “all-inclusive:” four brand new tires and tires for life, along with mobile tire rotations, damaged tire replacement and on-demand roadside assistance. The price point variations stem from tire quality. If you want a luxury tire, you’ll be paying a little more, but the services are the same.

There’s even a $10 per month option that offers services for customers who just want reliable rotations and emergency flat or damaged tire replacements.

“We’re a holistic subscription service,” Olson says. “It doesn’t matter what you’re driving—we have a subscription offer that will cover you, your car and your lifestyle.”

That’s the real draw of subscription services, Olson says—the opportunity to customize services to our individual lives.

“Systems like this democratize consumption,” he says. “The access to good quality products skyrockets when you use a subscription service.”

In the case of tires (or car maintenance in general), Olson posits that the average person isn’t in a financial situation strong enough to handle an unexpected charge in the thousands. If you pop a tire (or all four), you’re facing that immediate cost.

“A four-digit expense is scary enough,” Olson says. “But most households have more than one vehicle, so if you multiply that cost by two or three, you’re looking at huge barriers to necessary services.”

Olson says Treads gives back control to consumers by lowering those barriers and making the process more convenient.

“I’m not a mechanic, and I won’t ever claim to be one,” Olson laughs. “But I am a consumer. Scheduling maintenance, getting emergency assistance, choosing a tire type—it’s all done through our app, and that’s the ultimate peace of mind for me.”

Like Crumbl, Treads has seen success since its launch. Goodyear tires signed on as a distributor for their installation network, and funds like Convoi Ventures and Kickstart met Olson’s idea with millions of dollars.

Consumers are happy to be along for the ride.

“We’re growing rapidly, about 20 to 30 percent month over month,” Olson says.

While headquartered in Park City, Treads has 14 locations across the U.S. with hopes of hitting 79 by the end of next year.

“On the commercial side, airlines, bus and truck fleets use a lease program for tires very similar to what we’re now offering to consumers through Treads,” Olson says. “It’s a model that we know works and is successful. Why not let everyday people have the chance to experience it?”

Of course, even for consumers, Treads’ idea isn’t that new—at least not globally.

“There’s been a shift in what consumers are expecting,” Olson says. “They want options, customization, to break out of the status quo of how buying has always been. Other markets have tapped into this idea already. Companies in Europe started offering subscription services for tires a year before Treads in 2018. Now, we’re answering that same push from consumers in the U.S.”

Goodbye Netflix, hello book club

For some industries, 2018 is very recent history. Anne Holman and Calvin Crosby, co-owners of The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, had book clubs dating back to the late nineties. Back then, customers had to call the store to set one up. 

The King’s English launched its First Edition Club after seeing other bookstores like Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, implement similar programs successfully.

The First Edition Club is a monthly subscription where booksellers select a just-published or about-to-be-released book. Initially, the subscription was sent to all kinds of audiences and offered mainly traditional literary fiction. Since its launch, the positive reception has been immediate and large enough to earn a profit—and warrant a few new additions.

Today, The King’s English has expanded from one to four First Edition Clubs—adults, young adults, middle grade and children’s illustrated are all categories—along with “Queenie Reads!,” a former bookseller’s own subscription box. Customers can buy a six-month First Edition subscription for $200 or a year-long subscription for $400, while Queenie Reads! is a little pricier at $225 and $425, respectively.

For The King’s English—and most other brick-and-mortar bookstores—getting the pricing right was make-or-break for the subscription boxes.

“One of the benefits of being a small, indie bookstore is that we know our customers,” Holman says. “Some of them have been participating in these subscription boxes for 10 to 15 years. We have a relationship with them, so we’re able to reach out and get honest feedback: ’What are you liking? What are you not a fan of?’ We’re able to buy new books that our audience probably doesn’t have and that they’ll love. That makes the boxes worth their money.”

In the earliest days of Covid, The King’s English—like thousands of other retailers—had to cancel bookstore meetups and events in favor of social distancing. Luckily, programs like the subscription box played well, especially during the “book boom” of the early pandemic, where The King’s English saw a spike in online orders.

“We’re always looking for ways to keep in touch with our customers,” Holman says. “Boxes like this remind them that we’re still here. We’re just 1,800 square feet, and subscriptions were—and still are—a way to expand our reach without needing to also expand our footprint." 

But subscriptions like the First Edition Club don’t just benefit the bookstore.

“It’s another way for authors to get their books in the right hands,” Holman says. “We’re creating relationships for them, fostering community even from a distance. If we can boost a new author and help them break out, we include their books in these boxes.”

There’s a major drawback to product-subscription models when you’re a smaller business, though: capacity.

“There are some bookstores that send individual books to individual people, but at this point, we just don’t have the bandwidth,” Crosby says.

If something was going to slow down their subscription boxes, the time-consuming nature would be the killer. Smaller retailers often have employees juggling multiple jobs. The First Edition Club is a shared burden.

“We’ve developed an assembly line system,” Crosby says. “Once the books come in, it’s all hands on deck—making the boxes, packing the books, writing the notes, mailing it out. But we get hundreds of orders, and it can end up taking hours and hours, even with everyone’s help.”

Still, the customer feedback has been so good for so long that The King’s English doesn’t plan on pausing their subscriptions anytime soon. In fact, they’re adding more.

“‘Rewriting the West’ is going to be a subcategory for all of our boxes that reflect native voices,” Crosby says.

Author Terry Tempest Williams will also debut her own curated subscription called “Unlikely Alliances,” where her hand-selected books can be delivered to your home monthly along with postcards and customized notes.

“We’re even thinking of revitalizing our puzzle club,” Holman says. “Every three, six or twelve months, you’d get a puzzle from us.”

Olson says that any subscription service can get that kind of long-term buy-in from customers.

“Whenever you do something radical in an industry, you’re going to be met with pushback, skepticism and unique roadblocks,” he says. “For a subscription service to survive, you must believe in what you’re doing and really market that potential. Consumers will always want these kinds of options, regardless of what industry your subscription is in.” 

“Big” really does mean big here—Jack Daniels, Fender, Game of Thrones, Major League Baseball and Warner Brothers are just a few of the contracts they’ve secured.

Licensing is how they differentiate themselves from the many other wedding band and ring companies across the state of Utah.

“There are three ring makers within a 10-mile radius of our offices,” says Christopher Bright, Manly Bands’ director of products. “They pop up here all the time.”

One of the ring makers next door to Manly Bands specializes in gold rings, Bright says. Another is big on customization. 

“We decided to not touch either of those things and push ahead on branding,” he says. “And I’d say it’s worked out well so far.”

Bright is being humble. From 2021 to 2022, the company saw a 70 percent increase in licensing sales alone while continuing to monopolize the niche.

Late last year, Manly Bands launched their most ambitious collaboration yet: a Lord of the Rings collection, aptly dubbed “The One Collection to Rule Them All.”

Such huge names on one side of the teeter totter might lead you to believe that Manly Bands is a billion-dollar operation too. In reality, they employ fewer than 100 people and house the operation—from designs, manufacturing and retail—all within a few blocks in northern Utah.

Each year, the team specifically budgets for licensing agreements.

“When you’re a small-to-mid-size company like us, managing these deals requires setting aside cash,” Bright says. “We do everything to hedge our bets—including mountains of pre-work in design and planning, but if you’re not careful, a bad deal can wipe you out.”

Despite the risks, Bright says he starts each year with a plan for at least two licensing agreements.“While it’s difficult and expensive, we’ve found every deal to be worth the time,” he says. “There was one that ended up falling through where we had to cut a big check on the minimum guarantee, and even that was a learning opportunity.”

But how does a mid-size, local company like Manly Bands land global powerhouse licenses? Cold emailing is a lost art, they say.

“We didn’t have a licensing representative until 2021,” says Michelle Luchese, co-founder and co-CEO of Manly Bands. “Jack Daniels was our very first deal, and we got that by just reaching out. We pitched a Jack Daniels-inspired ring over email, and they were responsive to it.”

Luchese says at the time, Jack Daniels was just starting to branch into licensing opportunities. Many collaborations between a product and brand materialized as basic and obvious combinations. Bright says going that direction often pushes deals in the wrong direction—and makes a lower quality product.

“We’d never just slap a logo on something and call it good,” Bright says. “Our designs are all in reference to the brand, and I think that’s what made us interesting.” 

Instead, in the joint first foray into licensing, Jack Daniels and Manly Bands cooked up rings made with actual whiskey barrel inside.

“It’s still a wedding ring, but we added this new layer of personality,” Luchese says.

That infusion of personality was the drive for creating Manly Bands in the first place.

“When my husband and I were engaged, jewelry stores would roll out the red carpet for me,” Luchese says. “There’d be these shelves and drawers with hundreds of diamond rings, and then they’d offer him one of four bands in the back.”

The experience—one that should have been fun and exciting—ended up draining them both. That’s when they founded Manly Bands, together.

“You’ll only buy a wedding ring once,” Luchese says. “Or maybe twice, if you’re part of the national average—the point is, it’s a special thing, and it’s something we assume you’ll be wearing for years and years. It should be personal.”

The 2020 Jack Daniels deal launched Manly Bands’ licensing path.

“The success of that rollout added a lot of legitimacy to our brand and nodded to other companies that we were worth working with,” Luchese says. “We just needed to get our foot in the door, and then the product development spoke for us.”In the following months, they scored two more physical partnerships: MLB and Fender, both of which were easy to incorporate.

“The question of what to put in the ring is answered without much debate when the product is tangible,” Bright says. “A whiskey barrel, a guitar string or pick, part of a baseball or a mitt.”

Bright sources the physical material, then calls up his manufacturing team next door.

But things get more challenging when exploring conceptual offerings.

“Unfortunately, I can’t go to the Shire to collect materials,” Bright says.

The lack of clear direction ended up being the biggest difficulty in designing for the Lord of the Rings partnership, pinning down the right feeling without stepping on too many toes—or violating a contract.

Bright says the “guardrails” for each of Manly Bands’ licensing agreements are similar.

“You can’t laser engrave an image from the movie on the inside of a ring,” Bright says. “We also don’t have rights to an actor’s likeness or their names. We usually need to avoid fonts from movies or books, an author or director’s names.”

But those are just the bright line rules. Often, it’s the murky gray area that stalls work.

“Sometimes the limitations are confusing,” he says. “There have been multiple occasions where we didn’t know we’d crossed a line until we’d submitted it for review.” 

With all of that happening in the background, he says the licensing deals can feel like navigating a maze filled with booby traps.

“As much as it’s exciting, especially when you’re dealing with companies and characters with massive fan bases, a licensing deal can be terrifying,” Bright says. “While working with Lord of the Rings concepts, we knew it wasn’t just corporate or the Tolkien estate we needed to think about—if we got something wrong, the fans would tear us a new one.”

But despite the bone-chilling fear that an online fandom can instill, the Manly Bands team is grateful for the pushback.

“They have a brand they want to protect and so do we,” Bright says. “The contracts and fan relationships help us know that the products will sell—we don’t see them as restrictive so much as directive.”

In fact, Bright credits the mix of internal and external pressures for how well the Lord of the Rings collection performed.“Our initial ring prototypes felt flat, like copy and pastes of previous designs,” he says. “We pushed forward with them for a while until finally, my gut feeling took over—what we were about to hand in just wasn’t us, and it wasn’t Lord of the Rings.”

He sent the entire team back, with homework: read the books, watch the movies, listen to the soundtracks, study the artwork.

“We reconvened a month later with the best ideas we’d ever had,” he says. “We hit that sweet spot, where fans can tell what ring is for Legolas, for Frodo at a glance. We used material we’d never used before—lava rock, bowstring, carbon fiber, we really pushed our own comfort zone. Ultimately, that’s all really thanks to the constraints, not in spite of them.”

While they’re obviously making a fair profit off the ring collections, Bright says they go out of their way to keep pricing the same across styles.

“By sales volume, we sell many more licensed rings than we do other types,” he says. “But by margin dollars, each ring earns similar amounts. We pay a royalty on each licensed ring, but we choose not to inflate those prices.”

Luchese says the pricing guidelines harken back to why she and her husband launched Manly Bands in the first place.

“We want the men shopping for rings to find something that really captures their story, that includes them in the experience,” she says. “Why would we price out the people we’re making our product for? They’re the reason we’re here.”

They’ve taken customer relationships a step further by involving their base in planning for future licensing agreements. Throughout the year, Manly Bands sends surveys to prior customers.

“We view it as a sanity check,” Bright says. “We’ll ask them to pick among a few license options, and then we usually follow their advice. They tend to propose the right answer—no pun intended.” 

He’s the sole operator behind “TheTomsters” handle, whose comedy accounts on TikTok and Instagram have over 50,000 followers combined.

“Sometimes I’ll just look at those numbers,” Johnson says. “And I know, compared to some other creators, it’s like a drop in the bucket. But if you really think about 50,000—that’s a stadium. It’s a small town. And they’re all opening these apps to see what I wanted to say that day.”

Most of Johnson’s astonishment comes from the suddenness of it all. It took him three weeks to go from casually posting to “intentionally creating.”

In July 2021, back when Johnson first started, he’d graduated from Utah Valley University in communications and journalism with plans to kick off a career in copywriting and marketing.

“As someone who, for better or for worse, thinks they’re a funny person, I decided to start posting videos on TikTok that I thought would make people laugh,” Johnson says.

The first few got a thousand or so views, which blew his mind (remember—he knows 40 people) but a series of posts about what Judgement Day might look like solidified his online presence. The 10-video series has nearly 2 million views.

“What I’ve tried to do—from the very beginning—is create a place that can be enjoyed by all kinds of people within that larger community,” he says. 

The relatability factor is at the core of his comedy.

“I want people to feel seen in my content,” he says. “That’s what gets the laugh with these kind of jokes—‘That could have totally been me,’ or ‘I’ve seen that before’. . . that’s what has to click.”

When I ask him how much time he spends on his content, he answers my question with his own: “Do you want time as far as intentional creating? Or actual time?”

The process of filming, editing, and posting, he says, is a few hours a week.

“But my accounts are always on my mind,” Johnson says. “Mostly because I like creating, but also because I have to think about it—you have to make consistent content, and it has to be at least a little funny.   

TikTok has been his go-to since TheTomsters began, but he soon decided to start posting on Reels, too—mostly because “there’s an audience of people (around my parents’ age) that are on Instagram and not TikTok,” Johnson says.

That turned out to be one of his better decisions.

“There’s a lot more money on Instagram, at least in my experience,” he says.

Like many creators, Johnson makes a video for TikTok and then uploads it to Reels afterward. It’s almost always the exact same content, and it often attracts the same number of views. The difference, though, is the pay.

TikTok and Instagram both have payout programs for people with a certain threshold of followers or interactions on the respective apps.

He was invited to the TikTok Creator Fund first.

“A few days after my first viral video, I got an invite to the Creator Fund,” he says. “People like to make guesses about how and why different accounts get in, but I really have no idea how it works.”

The payouts were small but consistent. Nearly a year later, Johnson was contacted by Instagram’s program, Reels Play Bonus. He was posting the same content with the same regularity on both apps and expected a similar payout from Reels. 

That wasn’t the case.

“I make double—sometimes even more than double—from Reels than I do from TikTok’s Creator Fund,” he says. “I don’t know why, I don’t know how, and I’m not interested in finding out. When I first saw the numbers, I thought it was a glitch. I was worried they’d go into my bank account and take it back.”Luckily, he says that hasn’t happened.

“I do worry that I’ll wake up and all of my followers will be gone,” he adds.

That, Johnson says, is a more real possibility. He has seen his followers fluctuate, depending on the type of content he posts. He points to certain themes that have caused “a bit of an exodus” from his accounts as he has evolved his content from what his initial audience expected. 

“Both my TikTok and Instagram were my personal accounts prior to all of this,” he says. “My Instagram I’ve had since high school. I’ve continued to post content that you’d probably see on a normal Instagram page.” As people mature, their beliefs and convictions evolve. Johnson is no different. As he stepped back from convictions of his youth, the people he grew up with saw him shift in real time. “It left a lot of people with a lot of questions,” he says.

“Some of the comedy went from tongue-in-cheek to coming off as rude instead,” Johnson says.  

Finding content that can make all (or at least most) of his followers laugh has proven to be difficult.

Many popular creators start with a niche and slowly build it out over time—at least, that’s the advice they give fledgling influencers. For Johnson, that just wasn’t possible.

“I watched my follower count drop,” he says. “More and more people unfollowed me, and I was at a loss for what to do—my whole account was kind of built on a version of me that wasn’t really there any more.”

The pressure forced him to rethink his approach to the account—and comedy in general. His solution was a classic for entrepreneurial thinkers: pivot.

“I’ve been stepping outside my niche,” he says. “Just little steps, but I’m taking them.” He has even dipped his toe into standup comedy.

“Open mic clips are pretty popular for short-form content,” he says. “And the popularity of my account made me feel like I could do it, so I did.”

Johnson’s done a handful of shows locally and he says so far, so good.

“I never would have done that before these accounts,” he says. “If I had to go back to the beginning, I might have widened my approach from the start. That might have solved some of these problems, but I wouldn’t have this kind of personal growth, either.”

Plus, getting him (a little) out of his comfort zone proved to be the antidote for his follower hemorrhage.  He has gained a host of new followers who appreciate his current perspective.

Those new followers aren’t just watching videos, either. They’re buying his merchandise, one of Johnson’s newest efforts, and diversifying his brand.

“I wanted something that could be print-per-purchase for my merch designs,” Johnson says. “Since I’m new to all of this and I wasn’t sure how well it would sell or what would be popular, I thought it’d be safer to hedge my bets.”

He uses Amazon’s merch program, which allows him to manage designs and orders by himself. The items are listed individually on Amazon under his brand name, “TheTomsters.”

“I’d recommend that approach to merch for new creators,” he says. “It’s a great way to test out your ideas and see what your audience is responsive to—and it’s not a money pit. You’re not holding onto a bunch of inventory.”

A piece-by-piece merch system isn’t only profitable, it’s also much more convenient for a one-man-band like Johnson. For him, time management is everything.

“I’m very grateful to my past-self for setting expectations low,” Johnson says. “Nothing I put out is super polished. It doesn’t look crazy professional—that’s kind of my theme. It makes producing content faster.”

But while the supportive, attentive audience is nice—and a real point of validation—the numbers aren’t his favorite part of his social media experience.

“I have to say that the connections I’ve made with people come out on top,” he says. “I’ve met a lot of new people, but I’ve also had the opportunity to talk to people I went to high school with and extended family members about faith, life…everything. I don’t think I’d have those experiences without TheTomsters being a thing.”

While he’s struggled with the heavier conversations, Johnson says they have brought him to a few new realizations about himself and his relationships with his friends and loved ones.

“I don’t have an answer for how anyone else should be living their own life,” he says. “I’m just here to make you laugh a little.”

That’s laughter he’s after…and maybe a second stream of income, if possible.

“I’m not mad that apps I’d get on anyway send me money every month,” he says. “That’s the cherry on top of everything.”