Meet Utah's entrepreneur-in-residence

SANDY — Brad Bonham was comfortably into what we'll call his first retirement when he was summoned to a meeting with the governor in early 2023.

It had been a year and a half since he'd sold Walker Edison, the ready-to-assemble e-commerce furniture company he'd started from scratch in 2006 and turned into such a runaway success that it was acquired by Blackstone, the New York-based "world's largest alternative asset manager" that has a reputation for buying only the best.

Stepping down as Walker Edison's CEO at the age of 41 had given Brad time to 1), spend more of it with his family and 2), go back to school. And not just any school. He was accepted into the prestigious Owner/President Management Program at Harvard Business School, where enrollment is limited to executives who are managing, or have managed, successful businesses.

So he was busy but not too busy.

"Gov. Cox knew I didn't have a day job anymore," says Bonham, remembering when he met with the governor to see what he wanted to talk about.

The governor got right to the point. What he had in mind was the creation of a new position in state government that would "make sure Utah is the place to start a business." He wanted Bonham to assess the state's economic environment and see where and how it could be improved so self-starters — folks who like to think outside the box and be their own boss — people like Bonham — could thrive.

"I said, 'OK, how much are you going to pay?'" remembers Bonham. "And he said 'Zero,' and I'm like, 'OK, I'm in.'"

Just like that, Utah became the first state in the country to have an entrepreneur-in-residence.

The position, as Bonham quickly discovered, is entirely voluntary. There is no budget. There is no expense account. No tax dollars are involved.

So why did he agree to the job?

"It's simple for me," he says. "It's because I care deeply about entrepreneurs. I love helping entrepreneurs."

Bonham's love for entrepreneurs can be traced back to his birth. He was born into a family of them – people constantly on the lookout for untapped markets and products to fill them.

Older Utahns will likely remember the Tote Gote, a motor scooter-type contraption built sturdy enough to "tote" a deer out of the mountains. It was a minor sensation in the 1960s. Its inventor: Ralph Bonham, Brad Bonham's great-grandfather.

Brad Bonham's role model is his father, Scott Bonham, a man, says Brad Bonham, "I never saw work for someone else. He's had a few things go completely bust, but he was never afraid to start, never afraid to go in head first." Among other ventures, in addition to being involved in Walker Edison (Walker is Scott Bonham's middle name, Edison is Brad Bonham's middle name), Scott Bonham programmed the world's first digital timecard and started Gold Canyon Candle, a successful scented-candle business.

Brad Bonham's personal story is the kind entrepreneurs like to tell around the proverbial campfire. How he was a student at the University of Utah, studying for a degree in finance, when he had a meeting with his counselor to talk about future career opportunities. The counselor told him he was on track to land a job that would pay him $60,000 when he graduated.

Wait a minute, thought Bonham, he was already making more than that with the two "side hustles" he was running while going to school. One was buying and selling high-end watches online, the other was buying and selling auto parts.

He left school shortly after that. The watches and auto parts soon gave way to a gift basket company he and his father acquired and improved, which gave way to Walker Edison.

Bonham has dived into his entrepreneur-in-residence nonprofit role as enthusiastically as those that have been for-profit.

First thing he did was travel the length and breadth of the state, organizing lunches and inviting local entrepreneurs or would-be entrepreneurs to attend. He listened to their comments, hopes, problems, suggestions and concerns (and paid for the lunches). That took up the first half of 2023.

Armed with their input, he spent the second half of the year setting up a website: startup.utah.gov — a one-stop-shop clearing house for all the tools and resources entrepreneurs can access, full of information designed to "make it as easy as humanly possible to start a business here in Utah."

The website has been up and running most of 2024. As word spreads, more and more success stories are pouring in. "I believe wholeheartedly that government is great when it enables and it's horrible when it impedes," said Bonham recently as he met with the Deseret News at Twenty and Creek, the event venue in Sandy run by his wife, Megan Bonham (yet another Bonham entrepreneur). "Utah is already the best fiscally run state in the union. My goal is to make it even better."

The single biggest hurdle all entrepreneurs face, says Utah's e-in-chief, is "overcoming no."

He explains, "I don't think it matters what space or industry you're in, everywhere you go, every time you talk to someone, even in government, you'll find people are pre-programmed to say no. I think most people get discouraged when they hear the word no. The key is when you hear no to think 'how do we get to yes?' Successful entrepreneurs overcome obstacles that would normally stop most people. Entrepreneurs just power straight through that kind of stuff."

That's free advice, by the way.

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