Launching Businesses and Pursuing Dreams

Students from the Everyday Entrepreneur Program who learned how to turn a side hustle into a business.

The Everyday Entrepreneur Program teaches most diverse cohort

Danny Morante is an audio-engineering student and a rapper who wants to take song writing and his recordings to the next level. He also wants to help his mother grow her tamale business. Alison Chen Yee wants to launch a new product to sell in her massage-for-athletes business. Jose Garcia recently launched his molé business.

These were three of the 12 student entrepreneurs who participated in Salt Lake Community College’s Everyday Entrepreneur Program (EEP) at the Miller Campus (The Mill) last summer. Since the EEP launched four years ago, this class represents the most diversity of any class among the 250 students (20 cohorts) who have participated thus far.

“Business ideas were as diverse as the students,” says Beth Colosimo, executive director, The Mill. “EEP students brought their cultural backgrounds and experiences together in a way that created rich and meaningful classroom conversations and an understanding of one another’s heritage.”

Students brought their cultural backgrounds and experiences together in a way that created rich and meaningful classroom conversations and an understanding of one another’s heritage.

Through the course, entrepreneurs learn to identify and validate a business opportunity, mitigate costly errors, then build a solid ‘go-to-market’ strategy to successfully launch their business. “There is nothing like this out there— no one is doing what we’re doing here at The Mill,” says Jon Beutler, who teaches the class and is the director of the Entrepreneur Center.

“A lot of the individuals are already doing something as a side hustle and want to bring it to the next step,” adds Beutler, who is now piloting an EEP 2.0 class. “For some of our students, starting their own business is really the only choice they have to build a career.”