S1,E22: Sorenson Impact Institute, CEO - Geoff Davis

Have you ever wondered how a brush with death might alter your life's trajectory? Geoff Davis, CEO of the Sorensen Impact Institute, joins me to dissect his extraordinary shift from global entrepreneur to social impact visionary, driven by a profound personal health crisis and a legacy rooted in community service. Blending intimate reflections with engaging tales of his journey, Geoff delves into his family's influence, his life-changing experiences with Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, and his philosophy of prioritizing health and meaningful relationships over unending ambition.

This episode isn't just a narrative; it's an invitation to explore the intersection of finance and philanthropy. As Geoff recounts the development of Cicero Impact Capital and the construction of the University of Utah's Impact and Prosperity Epicenter, you'll be captivated by how his commitment to social betterment weaves into every endeavor. From the living rooms of Davis, California to the forefront of global impact investment, Geoff's story is a testament to the power of integrating social purpose into business and education, cultivating a new generation of leaders.

Whether you're intrigued by the potential of microfinance or seeking inspiration for balancing life's complexities, there's something here for you. Geoff's candid discussion on the challenges of scaling social enterprises and his current efforts to shape public policy through the Sorensen Impact Institute provides a blueprint for anyone looking to make a lasting difference. Join us as we traverse Geoff's compelling story that not only traces the arc of a life well-lived but also ignites a spark for cultivating community and environmental stewardship in our own lives."looking to make a lasting difference. Join us as we traverse Jeff's compelling story that not only traces the arc of a life well-lived but also ignites a spark for cultivating community and environmental stewardship in our own lives.

Please be sure to like, review, follow, subscribe and share the podcast with your friends and family! See you next time 

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Transcript

Erik Nilsson: 0:11

What is up everybody and welcome back to the Small Lake City podcast. I'm your host, eric Nilsen, and we're in for a real treat for episode number 22. Our guest this week. His name is Jeff Davis. He is the CEO of the Sorensen Impact Institute, which is built into the University of Utah.

Erik Nilsson: 0:29

It's located in the Eccles Business Building, but what he does and what social impact is is he has built his entire career around it about investing into developing areas, helping solve social causes and some of the biggest dilemmas, in helping some of our most vulnerable people around the world. Has traveled around the world and worked so hard to make people's lives better, to the point where he was knocking on death's door and that experience helped him prioritize his life, prioritize his relationships and really think about what the life that he wanted to live from there on out and where he moved back and had a couple great projects that he worked around in the Salt Lake City area but now is working on both things locally and domestically and internationally. So lots of great information, lots of great learnings from him. Super smart person that has solved some of the biggest problems that and there's a lot to learn from him. So, yeah, let's hear from Jeff, his story and some of the takeaways that we can learn from him.

Erik Nilsson: 1:25

Okay, jeff this is one of like. So so it's so fun because, like, you have such like an interesting story, because there's like a handful of people that I mean you could throw them in the broad context of like, oh, entrepreneur, investor, cool, like. But there's so much more to it. Like I don't know how familiar you are with, like Scott Paul maybe not two very different worlds, actually very different worlds but he kind of is a person that falls in that same category with you. It's always been someone who's been focused on impact, focused on making a difference, focusing on creating products for people to help make a difference and go from there.

Erik Nilsson: 1:59

So, honestly, like, yeah, excited to hear more of your story, how it all came to be, because I know I've seen part of it, because I mean we work together for a little bit of time. But then there's the whole how you got there and kind of what you've been up to now at Sorenson, because and then I mean just like the kid thing started, I mean you are could I be wrong one of eight kids from your family, the oldest, and I mean so where were you growing up? What was life like in that crazy household?

Geoff Davis: 2:22

So it's interesting. I actually just wrote an article in Forbes about a little bit of this. It was pretty nutty in a good way, yeah, but we were. We were very active, all of us with tons of sports. I had, you know, five. I did five sports in high school and my siblings did similar things, and then dancers and cheerleading and whatever that was in Davis, california. I sometimes joke that they knew I was gonna go on to such great things that they named the city before for after me.

Geoff Davis: 2:50

But a hundred years before I got there and but actively engaged, our mom, my mom, was always doing something in the community, formal and informal. You know she was always on some council, some committee, some something at the school and at the city, the town. But we also always had homeless people with us for Thanksgiving or, you know, some old lady from the community with us at Christmas or you know things like that. And taking it back a bit, just if we want to go back a bit, my grandfather was one of the people that helped start the Peace Corps. He had done some speech writing and done some work with Kennedy and then when they started the Peace Corps, he helped out with that and he actually ran. He actually ran. He oversaw Asia, the Peace Corps, oh wow.

Geoff Davis: 3:44

And my mom? So my mom spent part of her time growing up in Malaysia, in the Philippines, and so I heard a lot of those stories and kind of had that ethos, you know, imbued in me and in us growing up. And then my dad was a corporate attorney, an international corporate attorney doing structured transactions around the world, and so I kind of heard that part and then I, as you alluded to earlier, you know I got the entrepreneurial bug. Really, yeah, really young I go ahead.

Erik Nilsson: 4:10

I was gonna say it's so interesting like those two backgrounds, right, because you have your mother and her family that are so interested in giving back. Having founder of the Peace Corps being involved there, that obviously trickled down to her to being one wanting to be involved in the community and where she is it also I mean going back to that Forbes article it's like leave it better than you found it Exactly and it seems like that's kind of was that ethos that they were living by at that point Totally.

Erik Nilsson: 4:32

And then you, and then we'll get into the more the details of why this kind of compounds better. But then you have your father. Who's this attorney, who then was probably a lot of the motivation towards, I mean, microfinance and a lot of stuff? You do with the United States from there.

Geoff Davis: 4:43

Yeah, yeah, and in many ways he just opened my world to global business. Basically, you know, I'd hear him come back from. He was just in Sweden negotiating some transaction, or he's just in Israel, or you're just in Ireland, or you know whatever. And so I knew I wanted to do something globally and I started a couple small businesses when I was young.

Geoff Davis: 5:06

I sometimes halfway joke that my first one was I bought a. I bought a tub of redbines from the equivalent of Costco and I sold it retail at school, you know, and they probably caught at least licorice probably cost me two cents a piece and I sold them for whatever 20 cents a piece. And you know, I was, I was loving it and yeah, until the principal found out and called me in and told me to stop. And then I'm like, ah, that's it libertarian and no. But you know, I started lawn mowing companies and little things like that. And then and I actually started three businesses in undergrad I came, I I was thinking of going to school in California that's where I was raised and and my dad wanted to take me on a trip out here. I was right, I was a racer in high school ski racer and so you thought let's go skiing Utah. And so we came and I toured the BYU campus and thought it was beautiful and the skiing was fantastic, and I also thought the girls were totally cute check, check exactly.

Geoff Davis: 6:10

It's a beautiful place, beautiful women and you know, incredible, incredible skiing. So that's where I originally came here and I thought I played rugby in high school. I played rugby at BYU, actually oh, I didn't know that and, and my you know, I had this warped conception of what it, what BYU, meant, like I I don't know how serious I was, but I kind of halfway thought like the Mormon tabernacle choir was piked through the halls and everybody's all reverent and you know whatever like a sacrament meeting.

Geoff Davis: 6:38

Yeah exactly, exactly I go. I'm not sure I really want to go there. So I walked into the, the rugby office there and I think what was playing? I should remember this either welcome to the jungle or highway to hell, or something was playing, you know, like rock music was playing like okay like, my conceptions are totally so fun, so loved it, loved, loved.

Geoff Davis: 7:01

Byu, started three businesses at BYU and in the process also started learning about this thing called international development, that you know the there there are purposeful ways of helping countries and economies and societies develop and there are groups around the world that purposefully engage in that type of activity. I started learning that and thought that's super cool, yeah, and and so I want to know more because maybe there's something I can do there with business to kind of help things grow. But I didn't know what. And one of my professors said well, if you're serious about this, you need to go get a job at one of the best consulting firms in Washington DC and go, you know, work on some projects and really do this. So I did that.

Geoff Davis: 7:44

The next summer I moved to DC and got a job at a place called Chemonix, which is now it's probably like a I don't know three billion dollar a year consulting firm doing international development projects. And actually we want a little digression, that's a little bit fun, just kind of the entrepreneurial side, okay. So I called, I said to my professor who are the best ones? And he gave me the names and so I started calling them. Come on, it's supposed to be the best of the time. So I called Chemonix and I said I want to come work for you this summer. I want to do this, learn about this international development thing, and I want to come work for you. They said that's great. The only interns we have have master's degrees, or they're getting their master's degrees, or they're in grad school yeah, I'm a whatever, probably a sophomore or junior, yeah, in college. And I said, well, I'm really interested. Can I call you back in a little bit? And so then I went and learned more about their projects and I called back and I said, oh, I saw the work you did on the Aswan Dam in Egypt and you know, I just started engaging them and so I started calling.

Geoff Davis: 8:42

This is kind of pre-internet. I started calling them about every month-ish and then you bet, then every three weeks and then every two weeks, and just getting to know this person who would be the hiring manager. And and then finally I packed my stuff and got in my car and tried to drive in across the country and I called this woman named Hester Obey, who would have been I've been talking with, and I said I'm gonna, I'm in Chicago and I'm gonna be in DC in two days. I would love to meet with you at 10 am to talk about a job there. And she said what I said yeah, I told you I'm moving to DC and working at a consulting firm this summer, so I'd love to come talk with you. She said, yeah, okay, so I show up, you know, tuesday at 10 am or whatever, and I come in and and her assistant meets me and brings me. He said, oh, so you're the infamous Jeff Davis, okay?

Erik Nilsson: 9:35

you're a monthly exactly stalker, exactly so I.

Geoff Davis: 9:39

So she brings me into her office and and we start talking and 20 minutes later she offered me a job, a job, a job, not an internship, a job. I was paid as an undergraduate and, and my job, my job. It's like worse than get the coffee. My job was to. I was the database maintainer. Oh geez, for the resume database they had for all the consultants around the world for the consulting project. So you know, somebody would have to update their resume for the next project that can come on.

Geoff Davis: 10:09

X was bidding on and so all these resumes would come in and I'd have to scan them into the database. I mean, it was. It was not totally mindless, but pretty close. Yeah, but I didn't care, because I was there and I wanted to learn. You got your internship, exactly exactly, and I said. I said to her I said, well, I'm. They do these brown bags every Thursday and Friday. I'm gonna go spend an hour and a half listening to the brown bags where the project teams would talk about their projects, and so I learned a ton and I came.

Geoff Davis: 10:39

It kind of became known as the kid who's at every single one of these things just a sponge on the yeah exactly, exactly, and and one time there was a project had been, or there was a project in Morocco that needed some French translation, and I spoke French, and so I said I can do it, and so I translated this document. That ended up it was a UN document talking about NGOs in Morocco, and I translated it from French to English and it ended up getting you know someone's this is one of the best translations we've seen or something like that. So it became known that I spoke French that's our database.

Erik Nilsson: 11:11

Yeah, database analyst or not?

Geoff Davis: 11:13

even analyst or database peon, and and then then, like a week or two later, the team from that had been working in Burundi, africa was evacuated because of the Rwanda Burundi massacre and that there's a French speaking countries and they needed some help. And they said, jeff, don't you speak French and I, you know, I should like sat up my seat.

Geoff Davis: 11:39

Yes, sir, I do and so they handed me like a four inch stack of documents, and they all in French, and they said this is talking about something called the informal economy or the microeconomy. Read all of these and figure out what's going on and why the microeconomy has stalled there. And so then I went back to Hester, who had hired me, and I said I've just been asked to join this project, and she rolled her eyes. She said I knew this was gonna happen. Of course you can go. That's the whole point, you know. And the crazy thing is she kept paying me while I was working on this other project, like anyway. So I did that and I was reading through all this stuff and I came back to my manager and I said I figured it out, nothing is happening because nothing is happening exactly.

Geoff Davis: 13:02

But there really was truth to that meaning, meaning I had figured out that nothing, at the micro level, nothing could happen because everything was so interdependent, the, the, what the inside I finally got was I was trying to understand all these people that used to sell Coca-Cola on the corner.

Geoff Davis: 13:16

You've been there, you've seen, you know, and they just stand on the corner trying to sell water or Coca-Cola. They weren't doing that activity because they didn't have the coke or the water and the coke or the water suppliers weren't delivering because the tires had been burned off their trucks and they didn't have money to to get new tires and the tire people didn't have new rubber to get make new tire. I mean, the whole thing had kind of just ground to a halt. Yeah, and he said you know, genius, thank you. I said no, really, and I explained to it look, every little thing is interconnected at this level of the economy and so when it grinds to a halt, it grinds to a halt. So what we can do is what if we inject capital? What if we inject money into these super small businesses so that they can start trading amongst themselves and it can percolate up instead of top down and all of a sudden you have the guy on the street.

Erik Nilsson: 14:02

He was like hey, I can actually buy coke in exactly. Okay. Well, we can now exactly kind of it's yeah interesting, totally.

Geoff Davis: 14:10

And so he said that actually is a good idea. Figure out how to do that, because we have no people on the ground now. The countries have been kind of shut down because it's civil war, yeah. And so I went back and tried to learn some more and did some thinking and I came back with this idea. I found a local credit union that was still operating and I said what if we give a loan guarantee to this credit union to give out loans to small businesses that aren't even credit union members or whatever else? And he said you know, that might actually work.

Geoff Davis: 14:40

I think this is funny. This is probably 1994, 1995. He said I think there's a bank in India or maybe Bangladesh that does something like this, this kind of lends money to small businesses. I think John over on the such-and-such team might have visited them one time. Go talk to him. And so I go talk to this John guy and he says yeah, it's called Grammin or Grammin. I think it's Grameen Bank, you know. So I mean this is how much it was infant stage. And he described everything he knew about the Grameen Bank in five minutes, you know. Basically, I think they give loans and I think they somehow get women into groups of you know four or 10 or something people so they co-guarantee I'd say about as much as I know.

Geoff Davis: 15:23

So anyway, I tried to learn what I could and anyway the short we ended up getting some money from USAID I think was like 165 million bucks or something to do loans into Burundi to get things started back. You don't quote me on that number. It's been a while. But. But in the process I learned oh my gosh, this is amazing, these small businesses. So you can help small businesses grow.

Geoff Davis: 15:44

That's entrepreneurship. They decide what they want to do. It's financing, it's capital. It's helping people help themselves. It's a hand up, not a hand out. You know all these things like oh, this is cool, I want to do this. So I went back to school for my last year and wrote a senior paper on basically a business plan for a self-sustaining microcredit credit program and then said I'm going to go try this. So I sold and I started a translation company based on doing that work in Morocco and whatever eventually started a translation company, sold that. You some of that money and some other money to start a microcredit program in Mexico to try this out and see how it actually worked what was going on in Mexico?

Erik Nilsson: 16:22

and like their microeconomy it's similar to what you had found in Africa because, like with Africa, I'd assume again you could go and be like all right government top down, here's your capital, but in corruption everything probably not going to make much down there. But then if you can start to inject it at the individual level, the entrepreneurial level, then it starts to bubble up more without that filter. And I imagine trying to think about my Mexican history, what was going on around then? But I imagine Mexico is in a similar situation. It actually wasn't, it was just close.

Geoff Davis: 16:49

No, I mean it was just close geographically. It was like easiest place to get to for me to go try these ideas. You travel?

Geoff Davis: 16:54

Africa, or you travel to Mexico and then create one more fun, entrepreneurial thing, which you could also argue is lack of a prefrontal cortex or something, because I'm on my plane, on the plane on the way down to Mexico. So I mean, this sounds so dumb. It had to be more sophisticated in this, but it's the way I tell the story. I like wait a second, I don't speak Spanish. Wait, I don't know where I'm sleeping tonight, like on my way to Mexico City. To start this thing.

Erik Nilsson: 17:21

Just so excited. Oh wait a minute, there's a couple details I forgot.

Geoff Davis: 17:23

Figured it all out, but anyway. So anyway, that was kind of long roundabout way, but I wanted to tie in the BYU. Yeah, no, absolutely. Or Utah, and how I? How I first came here.

Erik Nilsson: 17:33

No, I love that spirit of saying because I feel like that gets a lot today. And like the job search, of being like, hey, like I want this, I'm going to show you that I want this, I'm going to show up and do this, and then it's kind of turned into this culture of I'm going to submit a resume to this LinkedIn job and cross my fingers, yeah, but really it's like that's not really how you get jobs now nor then. But if you can prove your value, prove your worth because, like there's a quote that someone I used to work with I always say is like and I mean it's mostly in the context of like getting into a tech company that you want to, it's like it doesn't matter the seat, as long as you get on the rocket ship, you're there, you can change seats when you get there and just like with you.

Erik Nilsson: 18:06

You're like I don't care what I'm doing, I don't care if I'm an intern, I don't care if it's a job, this job, sure, all you will scan resumes all day. But then all of a sudden it's like hey, we'll give you an app bat for this or we'll give you a chance. And then all of a sudden you just start to edge away and be like oh, actually, you just wrote this idea for how we're going to improve this economy. And they're like actually, let's try it out. And sure, let's go invest, I mean around $165 million through this other sovereign bank that's going to pipe the money. Like I didn't do anything like that when I was in college. Mine, I did intern in DC. It was the treasury I did pretty much nothing.

Geoff Davis: 18:38

There you go. It was as bad as it was.

Erik Nilsson: 18:40

It was this battle of oh, you can't do that, you don't know enough context. Okay, what about that? Oh, you're not going to be here long enough that it makes sense to hand you, I'm like okay. Go get my dry cleaning, will you? But more like we're going to go on another two hour lunch because there's nothing for us to do either. But it was fine it I learned that I did not want to work in the government.

Erik Nilsson: 18:55

There you go, there you go, so you have this hypothesis that you validated in Africa, and then you said I can do this on my own, this micro financing in Mexico. I mean, what did you find from there? Did it work in that similar situation Well, not similar situation, but that close situation in providing that? So my guess is, at your point you're like wait, this might be a little bit more of a universal concept, than it is based on these very niche situations that we're encountering.

Geoff Davis: 19:20

So what was your?

Erik Nilsson: 19:20

thoughts at that point, or what was your next steps?

Geoff Davis: 19:22

So my next steps? I actually so the guy who I earlier acted as everybody knows as if everybody knows what Grameen Bank is, I should mention that. So Grameen Bank invented the founder of Grameen Bank, a man named Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Prize eventually. He invented this way of doing micro, lending, of lending to small businesses or individuals to help them grow a business and work their way out of poverty. In Bangladesh in the 70s, after a very bad they had a civil war and then drought and famine and a whole bunch of things going on. And he figured out this way of doing it basically giving out small $50 loans, $25 loans, $100 loans, so that somebody could do something that could generate income and then they'd pay the money back with the income and then get a larger loan and grow, buy another cow to sell more milk or whatever, buy more chickens, whatever they were doing. And so I had met him as an undergraduate and then in 1997, there was the first ever microcredit summit held, which is back when microcredit was just becoming a thing in Washington DC.

Geoff Davis: 20:28

And so I decided, after doing this thing in Mexico, that I was going to go to that, and so I went and remet Muhammad Yunus met him again and told him what I had done in Mexico, and he said that's amazing. We're thinking of starting something here in the United States. You have to meet so and so and see if you can help. And so he introduced me to this person named Alex Counts who was moving from Bangladesh to the US to start Grameen Foundation. And I ended up saying I'm in, and so I moved from. I was living in California when I was doing the thing in Mexico. I moved from California to DC to help start the Grameen Foundation, help Muhammad Yunus, this Nobel laureate, start the Grameen Foundation in Washington DC and did that for about three years and basically with that we created microcredit programs all around the world based on what Grameen was doing in Bangladesh. And so I learned a ton. Yeah, I was going to say, if you're learning from the guy who started it all.

Erik Nilsson: 21:18

Yeah, exactly. What a fun little chain of events that gets you, I mean a seat at the table. Is so many. Totally I mean important, I mean Nobel Prize winning people doing the things that exactly you set out to do, totally exactly.

Geoff Davis: 21:29

And picking this up. Oh yeah, okay, here you go. And then I went to graduate school and I studied this and I wanted more sort of formalized business skills and I also understand how microfinance was actually working and what was happening in people's lives was really helping, et cetera. And then, coming out of that, with a group of other people, started a company called Unitas and we were the first ones to do microfinance at scale. We just figured out how to just really grow it fast. At the time when we started it was like a 90% supply demand gap, 10% market penetration. So we wanted to change that and so we figured out, we used venture capital, investment banking and strategy consulting skills and peep teams to find microfinance companies and then just supersize them. We turned them into for-profit companies, put the pedal to the metal and just grow like crazy. So we had about. We went from zero to 15 million microloans around the world in about seven years in a bunch of different countries.

Erik Nilsson: 22:31

And with that. So it sounds like and correct me if I'm wrong but so you're investing into these entities within the countries. That then would grow within the country. Yeah, grow within the country, so it's not like you're the ones directly investing in all the okay.

Geoff Davis: 22:44

We invested and helped them scale, that they ran it locally basically Awesome.

Erik Nilsson: 22:47

And then you would also on the strategy, consulting part of things too. Would you be pretty boots on? Well, I guess probably not at that point. We did. You'd be helping on. Oh, you would help on. We had teams that yeah, because they had.

Geoff Davis: 22:55

I don't know how much detail you want to go into, but back then microfinance was all non-profit, it was all done. It was funded by the World Bank and the Ford Foundation and things like that, and it was funded into nonprofits. So we had to convert these nonprofits into for-profit finance companies and the consulting team helped with that. And then we found that there were at least three key things to really grow super fast. One was a management information system, kind of an IT loan tracking system, et cetera. One was building middle management leadership. And the other was really efficiency around the front lines and being hyper-hyper-efficient in the delivery of the product and getting them, because this is not like today where you do everyone has a phone and you do peer-to-peer lending and this was like guys on motorcycles with baskets of money driving out an hour into rural India to hand out money to people under a tree and then getting the payments back and driving back. So it was like it's not bits and bytes, it was atoms, it was things actually moving around.

Erik Nilsson: 23:54

Well, it sounds so stressful because, like, obviously, if you're working I mean traditional, say, private equity, venture capital, whatever I mean you're injecting capital in large amounts to. I mean I can't like, if you're I mean Blake at Pelley on and you're like I'm going to go write a $100 million check to Divi you know how much money you're writing them. You have a seat on the board, you're going to go buy a quarter of a leave, make sure everything's going out. But then you go in this like third world developing country, like $50 for you, $100 for you, and it's like, yeah, we need to make sure we're tracking this Exactly. We need to make sure that we can do this and we'll train and upscale you and then we're going to hit the pedal of the metal and we're going to make this grow. So it's nice that, it's so cool to hear that you had this. I'm just almost like this playbook where you can say, okay, once we, once we identify these regional banks that can disperse the capital, change the for-profit, make this happen.

Erik Nilsson: 24:43

And it seems like I mean again going back to your hypothesis of Africa, india and Mexico, those that already validated that. So then you get to this point where it's just like, yeah, let's scale it, let's do this wherever we can, wherever we can make an impact and start to see the fruits of those labor.

Geoff Davis: 24:56

Yeah, you've hit on it. We didn't do any product development. Basically, we just found ones that already knew how to do it but didn't know how to scale it. So we scale it, we just had. The secret sauce was how to grow them. We grew about 180% a year, wow.

Erik Nilsson: 25:06

Yeah, and then such a like and this is the thing too is like, and whenever I think of I mean impact investing in general, you're always going to be the first one to come to mind. You need to broaden your work, working on it, but it's so interesting to see. And again, going back to your parents example, right, I mean you have your mother, who wants you to leave it better than you found it, wants to support I mean developing places and people that need help. And then you have your father, who's let's call it the more pragmatic, more litigious, more I mean the paperwork side of things, and you kind of have all this going together. You have, you mean, these great experiences. You have this experience of international business that you had, and it just kind of sounds like everything.

Erik Nilsson: 25:43

You're like the perfect candidate to make it happen from the day you were born, and it's so fun to hear in your voice not just now, but in times I've heard you there's so much passion behind it, because that is what motivates you, and it's such a hard world in investing and I think I've talked about this before, but, like I mean, when you take out the impact piece, usually you're going to make a better return. However, it's interesting to see once you can see the impact that you make. Like, yeah, I'm still getting a return, but everything else is so much more important and so much more impactful than anything else. Like I don't care about scaling a toothpaste company, that's a, d to C so I can go make a hundred X. But if I can support hygiene in rural Africa so that they don't die of these diseases that no one should have ever died from, that's a whole different investment thesis and 100% 100%.

Geoff Davis: 26:29

Two thoughts on that. First, if you calculate, if you, if you, if you pretend like Externalities is something that economists made up, you say there's no such thing as externalities but everything has impact and so we need to account for it all instead of just the financial Yep, then the returns look totally different when you think about, you know, impact investing, if you internalize the externalities or whatever you want to say. And the second point is even absent. Doing that, you know, I, we don't totally advertise the returns we had, but we had to top quartile, top quartile VC returns consistently on our investments and these were helping the poorest people would get fined, often illiterate, giving them hundred dollar loans in the middle of nowhere, you know. And we had, we had north of 30% returns consistently.

Erik Nilsson: 27:11

Yeah, no one's gonna complain about all that, and I think the term that most people might be familiar with and, if not, like that double bottom line, we're not only are we generating a profit, but we're also generating an impact as well and sometimes it's hard to Get everything to a dollar impact of how you're gonna measure things apples to oranges, to pears to plums but it's I mean, it's always the thought that counts and doing a little bit more from there. I don't really, and so I mean United's. I mean it grew from this idea of how we can, how you can, scale a lot of these Microfinancing and help support a lot of people. But but I mean, as that grew, did you still have that same appetite, or what were your goals after that?

Geoff Davis: 27:46

Did you still want to do that or good question. I will say one thing too, especially to tie it back United's was tech early, got its early start in Utah and Then and then we moved the office to Seattle when my my partner and I were living and running at someone named Mike Murray, business partner, and. But we had a lot of support, both investors and donors, because United's was a hybrid we had a for-profit arm and a nonprofit arm from Utah Got it, and so a lot of this grew up. You could you could argue that, even though when it became famous and did all its work Was based in Seattle, it was really a Utah story in a Utah company, and I think we'll circle back to this.

Geoff Davis: 28:25

I think part of that is just growing out of the ethos here which I know you want to talk about on the back end of this, but the the ethos here of, I mean, most people in Utah want to do something good. You know great to make money but and want to do do something good. So I think that's important. So so when I left you, nytus, I took some time off. Do you want to talk about that at all or not? So I don't know. What do you? What do you want to do?

Erik Nilsson: 28:48

I mean, it's interesting Part of it's a unique part of your story, but I also know it's fairly personal.

Geoff Davis: 28:53

So, no problem, I'll do, I'll do, I'll do high level and you can take it where you want, sort of short of it. I was like I was gonna die. Deal there, I was about to die. You've a mism. I had some health issues. Yeah, my body started shutting down on my organs and systems were shutting down and it took a while took 11 doctors to figure out what was going on. My adrenal glands were failing and not producing enough cortisol to regulate all my systems and things like that.

Erik Nilsson: 29:18

So it took some time off to deal with that because you're like almost like bed rest for like, yeah, I was literally bed rest, yeah, totally a sleeping 16 hours a day type of thing.

Geoff Davis: 29:27

and and I was 30 held, was I at the time probably 37, 38, so young, young, but had been going hard right, have been doing eight years global.

Erik Nilsson: 29:37

I mean we had global operations so much travel, so much stress, just giving you, giving it your all.

Geoff Davis: 29:42

Yeah, exactly. In fact, just over these last holidays I wondered if I had, if I had kind of mythologized you know how much travel it was and how hard it was and everything. But I look back at my wife. My wife kept the blog the whole time and I looked back at it and then it really was. I was, you know, three small kids and I was gone 70% of the time. I was in India, I was in Geneva, I was in London, I was in San Francisco, I was in Kenya, I was, you know, argentina, just gone, gone, gone and and anyway.

Geoff Davis: 30:10

So we, we took time off, moved to the south of France, as one does when they're gonna die I should not going to die. We didn't feel I was going to die, we knew we the trajectory was that direction, but we figured we could catch it in time. They said we had about eight weeks to fix things and Went through treatment, healing, recovery, did a lot of yoga, ate a lot of really not like fancy food but like healthy food. Yeah, got a part of the reason we moved. There was vitamin. Natural vitamin D Production was an important part of the healing process because it triggers some things within the endocrine system and other things and that would help with the healing. And we figured, well, we could do that in San Diego or Hawaii, but we wanted to really just extract ourselves from everything and move away. So I lived on the Mediterranean, on the border of Italy, and on the Mediterranean in France.

Erik Nilsson: 31:00

I mean, what was going through your head at that time? Or you just kind of like, alright, just got to get through this other battle so I can go back to this. Or you're like I need to rethink things. Or is it just kind of its own process in itself? How deep do you want to go?

Geoff Davis: 31:10

I mean, just deep as you'd like. So there's a thing called the literature of the dying. It's a genre. It's usually parents writing letters to their kids when they have some terminal illness. So I read a lot of those, maybe all I don't know if it's all of them, but I read a lot of those books and, like I said, I had this feeling that I was gonna be okay. In fact, when I got the final diagnosis from the doctor, he told me I have good news, bad news. Good news, as we finally know what it is. Bad news is it's pretty serious and it's gonna take quite a while to rebuild and fix. But I pulled out a Moleskine, a brand new Moleskine notebook, and on the inside cover I wrote the road back.

Geoff Davis: 31:49

Oh and I just said that was just started my journal and I wrote and wrote you know, the whole time going through it. But I spent some time the reason I mentioned that literature of the dying I spent some time looking at death and just really exploring. What do I think about it? What are my fears? Am I excited? You know how's my life been so far?

Erik Nilsson: 32:07

It's like an interesting thing to process, like yeah, when you're, because it's one thing to think about death as Theoretically but when you're so sick you can see like the path of like totally if we did nothing, I have seven, eight weeks left. Yeah, exactly and like your face with it. I mean that puts you know whole different context of so I love that you're. The first thing you do is like I need to write all of this.

Geoff Davis: 32:26

Yeah, yeah. So I spent a lot of time, just, you know, process a lot of time sleeping, frankly, like I said, and we were super careful with with my diet. We had to be careful with my diet. But my first and my first thing was trying to process what was going on and Trying to process my emotions. I had young kids. I had kids that were eight, six and four at the time, and and then once you know, so I'm gonna skip forward, but you know, going through all of that, once it was clear that we really were, I really was gonna make it, then I was figuring out okay, I'm assuming I'm gonna come out of this, how do I want to come out of this? And I was already a good person. You've, we've told the story and you know, you know I was trying to do good and all these types of things.

Geoff Davis: 33:12

But I became much more deliberate. I really figured, I really focused. I was a typical type, a entrepreneur get it done. Yeah, push, push, push. You know, you know I'm, I don't have time to be sick, I'll be sick when I'm dead. It just takes him, you know, take some Benadryl and get on the plane or whatever. And and and I realized a couple of things. I realized, well, one thing I'll just pick up on the physical side of things. I had trained myself to do the hard thing physically. You know, mind over matter, push through, stay up all night, write the report, you know, whatever it is, take the red. I didn't, you know, make the meeting and whatever, to the point where the hard thing had become the easy thing.

Erik Nilsson: 34:00

Hmm.

Geoff Davis: 34:01

I was so used to it, I was so driven setter that doing the quote-unquote hard thing had become the easy thing and I realized what was really. What was really hard Was taking a nap. What was really hard was saying no to that next opportunity. Yeah, and and so I, I developed this thing, this, this Philosophy that have now shared, whoops shared and other in other places, called protect the asset. And I just realized we are Biological organisms, we're not mechanical. We can't just push, push, push. We can push for us sometime, but there is a limit. Yeah, yeah, there is a finite limit somewhere. And and we're also especially Knowledge workers are people who, you know, we're not actually Digging thing, but even even the diggers, even people that are physically doing thing, we are the assets.

Geoff Davis: 34:51

In the industrial age, the assets were machines, for the most part, of some sort. In this age, we are the assets. The knowledge workers are the assets. In the industrial age, we would invest in the assets. Right, you take the, you take the whatever, you take the printing press offline for a little bit to oil it and replace this gear and do whatever you proactively maintain it, because that's the thing creating value. Well, we're the things creating value now, but we don't take any time off.

Geoff Davis: 35:15

Yeah we say, oh, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. And yet we sprint yeah for the whole marathon.

Geoff Davis: 35:20

Yeah, exactly right. What a what a sprinters do at the end of the end of a 40-yard dash? They fall down. Yeah, we don't fall down, we just keep going. Or what does the NBA do at the end of the season? They take an off season. We don't, we just keep going. Everybody has a break, totally. But you know, drivers, we tend to just push, push, push. And so, anyway, I came up with this idea of protect the asset and just really proactively investing in being as purposeful and strategic and and what's the right, we're disciplined, if you will. Yeah, in self-maintenance maintenance, as we are I am in Other aspects of my life. So I started doing yoga. I mean, used to be, I was so like Frenetic, so pushing that yoga, I would joke.

Erik Nilsson: 36:00

Yeah, I got a type of yoga. I gotta go work yeah exactly, exactly.

Geoff Davis: 36:03

Oh, yeah, you imagine me holding, you know, downward dog for 30 seconds. And now I have a daily yoga practice. I've been doing it for probably 10 or 11 years. I meditate and you know I, purposefully, I, if my one of my kids or my wife called right now, I'd take the call. Yeah, you know, in the middle of meetings or whatever I Turn things off, I say, okay, I'm done at whatever time I decide eight o'clock, six o'clock, whatever time. I you know what I'm working on Try not to do things on the weekend. So, anyway, that's so. That's one learning. Second learning, and this is it sounds trite because people say it all the time, but I felt it so deeply and that's the importance of relationships. And just really okay, if I, if they're really important, like when you're staring things in the face, you know okay what matters. If I were to leave the earth now, what matters, and the importance of relationships and truly making Shifts, priority shifts, to put those in, put the prayer, put the relationships in an important place.

Erik Nilsson: 37:03

Yeah, not just say it right, yeah, we're talking so cheap and like that's one thing I've come to turn because, like, I'm very intentional about who has access to me, who has energy, who I give energy to, and If there's anyone like, let's say, I'm trying to build a relationship with someone I haven't seen in a while, I think there's a value, alignment Would get along, and it's like my biggest pet peeves. I don't have time. I'm like okay, can you just rephrase that and say like this is you aren't important enough.

Erik Nilsson: 37:25

Yeah, this isn't a priority right because that's fine, like it's fine, like not everything can be a priority, not everything can be super important. But I love that you had this realization like, hey, something has to change in my life, because you can't just be like, okay, I'm near death experience bounce back like all right, well, yeah, on a plane to Bangladesh, see you, and then just find yourself in the same place years or even worse, yeah, later from there and like that I had a similar, not nearly the magnitude of experience, but I remember when I was doing investment banking in Seattle and there was a time I was working on this pitch deck it was 3 30 in the morning. I look at the clock, I look at myself like what am I doing? Like what am I doing? Like I'm miserable. Right, I've never been in like a darker place in my life.

Erik Nilsson: 38:02

And but I think I think it's important For people to understand those limits because, again, like you said, we're biological creatures.

Erik Nilsson: 38:09

We are finite of how much energy we have, how much energy we can spend it from there, and like so for me for now, like now in my life, because of those experiences in the past, I know I'm like, okay, cool, I have to work out every day or else I start to get agitated easily.

Erik Nilsson: 38:21

He started hard focus. I meditate every day because I have to check it on myself and make sure I'm doing it. I stretch every day because if there's one thing I've learned in the elderly, it's mobility is very important and if I can have that habit now that I can do it and I mean the consistency over time is what does it like? One thing also, on that note of Kind of your priorities that I've always kind of seen from an outside eye in, is your authentic relationship with your family in particular, because, like when we were working together, I remember your daughter would come in sometimes and it was so interesting to hear how much you knew about what was going on in her life but also like things that she was interested in like and where there's like a, I think there's a walk out of school or something or some sort of oh my gosh.

Geoff Davis: 39:04

Yes.

Erik Nilsson: 39:06

Yeah, of course I'm gonna sport it's. Of course I love it like it's. It's so interesting to see how that has changed. I, like you've talked about the value behavior of not wanting to work on weekends, of turning everything off at a certain time, and I think there's something to be learned from that especially. I mean being literally recording the University of Utah. I remember walking these halls me like I'm gonna be an investment bank, I'm gonna work so hard, I'm gonna be the CEO, I'm gonna do all this. And then you reach your point like wait, I'd rather have like a meaningful life that I want with the people that I want to be there, than have these coffers of money and be alone At this penthouse apartment and can't do anything about it 100%.

Geoff Davis: 39:36

I heard, I heard a story recently. Someone said you know, there was this fisherman in Mexico that was out fishing and as he was bringing his boat in, a tourist saw him bringing his boat in and it was like 11, 30 in the morning and the tourist said so how to go? And the fisherman showed him his two big fish. You know two fish that he caught, not not huge like old men in the sea, but just two fish, and he said, oh, that's all there were out there. And the fisherman says, no, no, there are a lot more.

Geoff Davis: 40:09

I and the tourist says well, what are you going to do now? So I'm probably going to go home, have some coffee, take a nap and then I think I'll play cards with my friends in the evening. And the tourist says why don't you go out and get more fish? And he says why? He says because then you could sell more and after a while maybe you could get another or you could get an assistant to come out with you and then you could catch more fish and after doing that for a while, you could get another boat and then, after doing that for a while, you could get some more boats and eventually, like 10 or 15 years from now, you could sell the whole company. And the fisherman says and then what would I do? And he says, I don't know, maybe take a nap and then play cards with your friends. And the fisherman says have a nice day. Yeah, exactly.

Erik Nilsson: 41:06

It's so fun. I've seen so many things like that recently. I feel people are starting to waken up to the enjoy the life you want to and don't complicate it, because even using the fisherman example like so, he does that every single step of those complicates life. Another step, another responsibility, another 15 minutes of your week that you need to do 30 of those, and now you don't even know how you got there.

Geoff Davis: 41:28

Yeah, let me mention one other thing before.

Erik Nilsson: 41:30

I go on, Please, please please.

Geoff Davis: 41:32

One other thing I learned that may be helpful for people hopefully will be when I first got, when I got my diagnosis and was sorting through all this, I was friends with the president of Xbox and he told me he had had not the same, but he had had a. It was more. They knew it was short, but it was, I think, three months or six months of health crisis, but they knew it was just had to be dealt with for a while and he could only work I don't remember 10 hours a week or something like that and he said to me he said you know, those 10 hours a week for those six months, that was the most productive I've ever been in my life. Because I was forced to prioritize. I was forced to use the 80-20 rule, which is a very real thing. Oh yeah, a very, very real thing. The 80-20 rule is a real thing. Whether it's 90-10, whatever, just most things don't matter. In fact, quick side diversion if I am, oh please.

Geoff Davis: 42:24

So Larry Summers I was at this lunch with Larry Summers once and he had been those things. So he had been. Larry Summers had been the president of Harvard, he had been the chairman of the council of economic advisors, one of the presidents, he had been the secretary of treasury, et cetera. I mean, he's like this big deal, right? Yeah, quite pedigree.

Geoff Davis: 42:43

He said you know, there are three things I've done that have mattered. And I'm sitting like, are you kidding me? Yeah, I could probably list 50. Yeah, and he said what? And the only one I can remember was the Brady bonds, the Mexican peso crisis. He figured out this way to do this bond restructuring, credit default swap, stuff that saved at least the hemisphere, if not the world, from a global financial contagion. And he said but I just realized most things don't really matter. So, anyway, that's a big wig saying here's me saying it also that most things don't matter. Most things don't add the value that we think they do and very, very few things add outsized value. So I also learned that in order to work you know, not work all night and all weekends and all whatever I just say no to a lot of things that wasn't working out a lot of value and then focus carefully on the things that did. Anyway, that's just.

Erik Nilsson: 43:34

I just wanted to throw that out, oh prioritize and execute, like that's like I have a friend who he will do anything that's in front of him, but he will always end the day pass out face down on a bed, shoes still on, and I'm like, oh, like, did you want to do all these things today? And he's like, well, I just saw that it kind of needed to get done. Like, okay, maybe we should prioritize a little bit Because again, then you can actually focus on the things that matter and do those well and the other things, like, like, whatever, like MVP, like just do whatever. I need you to act to check the box because it's not going to matter that much and go from there. So I love you to this experience. So you go from the United States to taking this break in the south of France, which I mean I would opt for the south of France.

Geoff Davis: 44:14

Not a bad place.

Erik Nilsson: 44:15

Yeah, not a bad place at all.

Geoff Davis: 44:16

Some of my friends said man, I want you, I want what you've got.

Erik Nilsson: 44:20

Like, no, you don't, but you can stay in the south of France without it. So you bounce back. You have this new perspective and priority of life. I mean, where does that propel you to? Or where your priorities, now that you're, I mean, are feeling better and are ready to kind of be more of a participant than a spectator?

Geoff Davis: 44:37

Yeah. So I knew even more one of my friends when I was able to work again. One of my friends approached me about starting a consulting firm that he had started. He had had a couple large contracts and wanted some help. That turned into the world's whatever, one of the world's first social media agencies Back when social media would just get going and ended up doing, you know, work for Porsche and the Gates Foundation I mean just big global organizations and he ended up selling it and it would have been incredible. And I said, you know, I told him what I wanted to do and he said, ah, you're still on the Save the World track. So I was just kind of more the same, but better, smarter and slower, not faster. And so then I was asked to one of your questions you wanted to talk about is what brought me back to Utah.

Geoff Davis: 45:30

I was asked to come to move here and to help run the Perpetual Education Fund that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had started a few years earlier and, given my background in lending and whatnot, and then to develop something called self-reliant services, which the Church started, which was an effort to help. The Perpetual Education Fund gave higher education loans in emerging markets for people that couldn't go to school otherwise. In most countries there aren't loaned loan higher education loan programs government or otherwise so if you don't have the money, you don't go to school. So the Church started this program to help people go to college and beyond, and they realized after a number of years that that's not enough. In some countries, like the Philippines, somebody flipping burgers at McDonald's has a college degree, and so in some places it's not enough just to get an education and they wanted to figure out what else can be done. So they started something called self-reliant services and I was asked to come help with that and help develop that, and so we started a microenterprise boot camp helping people start their own small business.

Geoff Davis: 46:35

We started about 50,000 small businesses a year around the world and we helped about 20,000 people get better jobs. We taught people how to search for jobs and scan the job market and networks Tons of impact. Yeah, it was great, in addition to giving about 20,000 higher education loans a year. So I was asked to do that, so came here that's what brought us back here to Utah and did that for five years, and then, when that was done, took another round the world tour traveled with the kids, we homeschooled for a year and did all kinds of things. We did fun stuff, we did learning things Like we went to the Christmas markets in Europe and we went to West Bank and spent time in Palestine and Israel. We spent time in Cambodia, living on a remote island. We opened a community center in Todd English and opened a library on this super remote island in Cambodia. We surfed in New Zealand.

Erik Nilsson: 47:39

We spent time in Africa Wow, so just all kinds of yeah, I mean because I imagine at this point, so let's see, so if that was then when your kids were on there. So I mean they're probably. I mean oldest is maybe like early teenager down to like center eight.

Geoff Davis: 47:50

No, they're older now. So what catalyzed this was our oldest was going to graduate from high school.

Erik Nilsson: 47:55

Oh, okay.

Geoff Davis: 47:56

So we wanted to do a trip and Just do a graduation trip. But the crazy thing is I mean, this is silly. I don't know if she'll ever listen to this, but we just pulled a silly parent thing. We're like, oh, we're going to go do this trip. Of course we're all going to go. And she's like wait, I want to graduate, I want to have my senior year with my friends, and anyway. So she ended up halfway through the trip, she came home and she finished and graduated with her friends here, which is the right thing to do.

Erik Nilsson: 48:24

Oh for sure. And it's still such a great because I don't think I've ever traveled and walked with them and like, wow, I don't have an appreciation for another population of people or I don't have an added perspective of how the world actually works, and it's similar to how you had this itch from an early age to understand this international development. It's so great for your, I mean because, like, don't get me wrong, classrooms are great, education is great, but that is so much more important and can actually help you understand better your place in the world and what to do after that. Then understanding I mean, I can't even think of an example, but something trivially limited classroom.

Geoff Davis: 48:56

Totally 80-20 year old, which isn't trivial though.

Erik Nilsson: 48:59

Yeah, true, which is not trivial.

Geoff Davis: 49:01

We, we, we. We actually ended up homeschooling in France, going back in time, and we homeschooled for nine years, oh wow. And as part of that we traveled a lot. So we spent, we spent. We studied rainforests in Costa Rica and we said other things in Nicaragua, and we studied US history by going up and down the East Coast and we studied, you know, native American history from the Southwest and so there we had done a bunch of those things and so. But then in high school they all went to high school as that became time, and so we thought, okay, we're gonna do one last big family, you know the thing. And she, like any rational teenager, said I want to actually be with my friends my senior year, yeah definitely the way to do it.

Erik Nilsson: 49:40

So it's so fun that you do that. So you're at the church, you help stand up the perpetual education fund and the reliability services.

Geoff Davis: 49:47

Self-reliance, self-reliance, or the perpetual education, had been started earlier.

Erik Nilsson: 49:52

We just help get a little bit more Gas in the tank and sped up a little bit, and so from there. So you're doing these projects at the church and that is this. When you went to had a chat with Randy, that's what we met exactly.

Geoff Davis: 50:05

So, my great friend and shout out to Randy Shumway, we were friends from graduate school, we're at Harvard together and and he had started a consulting firm called Cicero group, which is here locally hip, actually started in San Francisco and moved it to Salt Lake City after I can't remember how many years 70, I'm gonna make up the number, seven years or something because lifestyle was better, cost of living was better, everything. And so he and I had been friends for a long time and I became a senior advisor at Cicero and and Randy and I started talking about create, building on Cicero's amazing consulting capability operational and strategic consulting capability with a private equity arm that would do good, like an impact investing arm that would use Cicero's capabilities, and I said, great, but I'm gonna go take this trip with my family first. Yeah, we did this round the world trip. We, he and I were talking and kind of coming up with plans, and when I got back, we, we did a big deep dive to figure out what we you know what we thought we could do and decided there was something there. So we started something called Cicero impact capital.

Geoff Davis: 51:13

Yeah, it's kind of like Bain and Bain capital, but the capital side was for social good and and we looked so we eventually invested in a water company in Africa. You helped with a lot of this. We invested in a water company in Africa, kidney dialysis company in Mexico and an education company in the United States and Then used Cicero's big brains and capabilities to help try to operationalize and make them better, help them grow, etc. So kind of like we had done with the microfinance now in other sectors.

Erik Nilsson: 51:45

Yeah, and that was so fun because I remember I remember meeting you. Actually I was getting my water bottle filled in my first week and, like anybody that young in their first week, everybody you see like hi, what do you do? And it was funny because I was like, oh, like, what do you do? Like oh well, we have Cicero impact capital, we're starting to do this. And it's like, oh, I just got done doing investment banking and came here to do consulting. You're like Perfect yeah.

Erik Nilsson: 52:07

Yeah, and thank you and it was so fun because, like from banking where I was I mean a boutique, boutique, geographic bank like I mean it was. I mean I knew exactly what I was talking to. I mean a lot of family owned business. But then it was so fun being on the sourcing side at Cicero impact capital, because I'd be on the phones with an entrepreneur in Africa and maybe someone in Asia or someone in Mexico and I've been speaking in Spanish.

Erik Nilsson: 52:29

Like it was so fun because a you get to learn about all these amazing things that entrepreneurs are doing to solve the problems in their communities and often like very creative ways to do so.

Erik Nilsson: 52:39

But then also it it's you have this global perspective and like we work to solve a lot of like the social development goals from the UN and understanding I know just like help me understand the global context better, which no better person to learn from them than Jeff and there are, but I was the closest you had.

Erik Nilsson: 52:55

We'll take it and so it's such like a unique experience for me to understand like, oh, like there's a lot of good things that we can do Throughout all of this and make an impact, still again, make a return, and I mean some of the people that we work there. We're so fun and seeing those businesses, like I remember the dialysis network of dialysis clinics in Mexico, like I didn't know anything about chronic kidney disease or renal failure or dialysis and the next thing by the end like this is a very good thing, totally. So then I know that you're there for a while and then now I mean, when you pivoted to your current role now as a CEO of Sorenson and because, like, if anybody Study, studied finance at the University of Utah, you know all about this, because this is one of the internships that is there to give students an opportunity to actually coveted. Yeah, go invest, build some models, actually get hands-on Experience from the buy side. But I mean, walk me through kind of what you're doing now in this role, how you still get to bake an impact and do some of the things you're most passionate about.

Geoff Davis: 53:50

Yeah, it's actually really, really cool. I, jim Sorenson, as I mentioned, did some work with us in the microfinance side 20 years earlier. We've been friends for a long time and so I'd known about the Sorenson in its sorenson impact Institute with Sorenson impact Center for a long time. We just became an institute, okay, so it's a Sorenson impact Institute at the business school at the University of Utah. So we, you know, I'd known about it and we'd kind of done some things. And in the middle of COVID, so three and a half years ago, he asked if I would, if I would run it, and at first we thought I would do that and keep doing the Cicero impact capital stuff. And then the both the opportunities here were such that it took full time basically definitely, and so we made that transition and the the vision is what we're trying to do is help create a world where the impact of our decisions are are Integrated into decision-making and the broad impact of our decisions. So earlier I was talking about the externalities and whatnot. We're trying to erase that concept and basically say everything has an impact and needs to be recognized and accounted for, and so we're trying to create that world. We think the. I personally think that the three biggest levers of change our public policy, public opinion and capital allocation, and and, and. So we're working mostly on the capital allocation side and I'll talk a little bit more about that. But we also do quite a bit of storytelling and communications. But then, in terms of thinking long term, if we want that kind of world, we need to train people with the skills and abilities to think that way and to actually operate that way.

Geoff Davis: 55:29

So what do we do? We do four things. We do impact investing, and we do that for the, the Sorenson family, we do that for some other families, we do it for some funds that we've raised ourselves, and that's basically. We find companies that are somehow doing good in the world For people or the planet or both, in addition to making money. So this is a commercial, you know. It's that we expect financial returns, but we invest in them, and we have a team of professionals that do that, come out of the venture capital industry, etc. So that's before five people at any one time professional, full-time professionals.

Geoff Davis: 56:04

But we then have about 30 35 students that are part of the process. They're there as analysts and associates, and so they're the ones staying up till 3 am To creating the model or whatever. But they're also learning how to integrate the impact, the social or environmental impact, into the financial analysis and to the investment decision etc. And the students actually make the investment committee recommendations. So they're coached and everything and overseen by the professionals. But the students are the ones that prepare the decks, that stand up in front of the investment committee and make the.

Geoff Davis: 56:38

You know, make the, the proposal and then take the questions, live on this. You know, like you, like we would do you and I would do so. These are students, you know, going through this. That's the first thing we do. Second thing I won't go as deep, but we do impact finance. So that's structured finances or former investment bankers that are using structured finance tools and techniques and approaches to solve, usually, social problems.

Geoff Davis: 57:00

And we've done some really cool stuff. Maybe I will share one thing actually, please. So we've done some, some work around early childhood education, for example in the Salt Lake area. Well, let me back up, zoom up and give an example. We basically figure out ways I don't know hopefully just doesn't sound too jargony If it is we we figure out ways to monetize, to make money from no, not make money from to to get the money for future savings that cause that, that are that result in social benefit. For example, if a young child gets the appropriate education now, the state or the county or the city doesn't have to invest much as much later in remedial things. If they get the right education, they, they, they're less likely to go to juvenile hall. It's like these leading data points.

Erik Nilsson: 57:55

If we can get education, then exactly there's not going to be early Pregnancy or family like all those sorts of things because it's interesting too, because, like I'm just to add on that, one thing I learned in a lot of that due diligence and deal sourcing is Access to capital. Yeah well, I hear me and we're complaining in the US like, oh my gosh, it's gonna cost me 6.5% for to get a mortgage, like go to another country, and it's like 15, 20, 20, like it's. So it's interesting to your point, like if we can just inject capital in the right places of the right people. Going back to your, I mean some of your earliest work that can have a beneficial Economic impact to a lot of these geographies and it's probably more, again, a universal principle than you think. So I love that that's still.

Geoff Davis: 58:36

Part of what you're doing exactly. Let me so what? Here's a concrete example. London wanted to convert its buses to CNG Save money and for the environment. They didn't have that. I'm gonna make the numbers up because I don't remember. They didn't have the $30 million that they needed to do that conversion at one time, but their annual Fuel costs were I'm making these numbers up at $10 million, let's say. And so they knew they and they could reduce those to $7 million if they go to CNG. So they knew they would get this, they'd get savings.

Geoff Davis: 59:05

So this type of transaction says okay, over the next 15 years You're gonna save this much money. You know, three times three million dollars times 15. So you can say 45 million dollars in order to invest 30 million dollars now. So what we'll do is we'll put together a transaction, we'll borrow the 30 million dollars from investors. Then you can do the transaction to change your buses over, that the transition to change your buses over, and then with the fuel savings, you pay back the investors. Right, so you pay. Let's say, your fuel cost is seven million dollars, so you pay. You know you just pay back a little bit each year back to the investors until so the investors make money on their 30 million. You save money, city of London saves money and the environment's better, so that kind of thing.

Geoff Davis: 59:43

So we've done that for Programs that reduce recidivism, which means going to back to jail after you've been out of jail. Yeah, we've done it for programs that reduce that, reduce child abuse. We've done it for programs that Give early childhood education, etc. Etc. Etc. So if you take that concept, it's really really cool. So, anyway, that's the second thing our team does. The next thing we do is we do something called impact measurement, mmm and reporting and strategy, so figuring out how to really measure what you're doing, and we do that for ourselves. We also do it for other organizations and families and foundations and things like that, and then we do impact storytelling. So I alluded to that. We. We make all this intellectual stuff compelling and do short videos and Infographics and things like that to try to communicate all of this because I imagine there's a huge piece of all of that that's in just raising awareness.

Erik Nilsson: 1:00:35

Yeah, because I mean let's go back to my example of Chronic kidney disease in Mexico. I mean I didn't even know how big of an issue kind of kidney disease was in Mexico because it's a very geographically Impacting thing. Like in the US we have a semi bad problem Just because, like American obesity but we can attribute to that. But then like Mexico and China, like are huge issues with it and like again things I didn't know. But then once I started to know I'm like oh, this is why these kidney dialysis clinics are so important. So I imagine that's a big part of that.

Geoff Davis: 1:01:02

Is that storytelling, awareness recognition in the word out, exactly, exactly. So that's the, that's the big idea. We do the work. We have about 35 professionals that actually do the work and we train on the work. We have about 65 students total that work with us at any one time and then we talk about the work. So we try to get the story out and and have more, more people copy us and and can I mention something that's really relevant here locally? I know you want to get some local connection. So we're building something amazing. In fact, see that yellow crane right there. Yes, we're those who are listening. We're looking out a window on the University of Utah campus. There's a big yellow crane in the middle of campus. We're building something there called the impact and prosperity epicenter. Oh really, so the impact epicenter.

Geoff Davis: 1:01:47

President Randall, taylor Randall, who's the president of the university, amazing leader. His vision for the university is to become a top ten public university with Arrival, their unsurpassed societal impact, social impact. So he wants people to think Berkeley, michigan, virginia, utah right, he wants that caliber, that level, but also known for social impact and actually really not in like just awoke, superficial whatever, but truly doing things that change the world and make the world a better place, and so we're building something called the Impact and Prosperity Epicenter. It's almost a 300,000 square foot building. Wow Costs about $133 million bucks. That's funded in really innovative ways. The university isn't just paying for it, the state isn't just paying for it, donors aren't just paying for it. So we structure, like all of everything we do, we've been very thoughtful and strut other donors and university money and investment money and we bonded for some of it. And it's going to house 778 students, from first years to graduate students. So it's a community. It's beautifully designed.

Geoff Davis: 1:03:03

You can go online. If you Google Epicenter University of Utah, you'll see some drawings, some renderings and things. And so it's six floors of residences I'm not purposely not using the word dormitory, because it's not that at all. There will be apartments, there are condo units. I mean, they're just amazing the way it's built. And then there are three floors of office space. So our new headquarters will be in there starting this fall, as well as our sister center called the Center for Business, health and Prosperity.

Geoff Davis: 1:03:35

And then there is a cafe, a bunch of seating, like kind of hangout eating space. There's a forum, a public forum, where we'll do lectures, where we'll do pod. You could do a podcast there where we'll show movies, have lectures, book clubs, et cetera, and then some classrooms and meeting spaces. And, as far as we know, it's the first community in the world. It will be the first community in the world dedicated to impact, to using business for social and environmental good, and again, not in a superficial, woke capitalism way, but in a truly meaningful way. And so it's living, it's learning, it's working, it's eating, it's kind of everything dedicated, dedicated. That's going to be right here in Utah. Right, if we had a little better arm we could throw a rock to it. I know right, and I think that's important for people to understand that this is going to be just like La Sonde.

Erik Nilsson: 1:04:33

I was going to say that's like a parallel, but like impact instead of entrepreneurs.

Geoff Davis: 1:04:37

La Sonde is known in the entrepreneurship space. It's known as this super cool place where students live together, engineers with artists with whatever, marketers live together and start a bunch of businesses. The entrepreneurship program here, depending on which ranking you use, is either number two or number four in the country, and a large part because of that. So a similar thing will happen with the impact space.

Erik Nilsson: 1:05:01

And I like that these two centers are coming in because, a like in La Sonde, you think about how much silicon slopes and lehigh has grown, and I mean if you look at a lot of the articles of number of entrepreneurs by college, like Utah's all like it used to be part of the conversation but it's only more becoming that way.

Erik Nilsson: 1:05:18

And a lot of that is for La Sonde and at least a place where people can go to fill that appetite, if they do have it in such an intimate way.

Erik Nilsson: 1:05:25

Because, again, it's similar to what you're describing with the epicenter, where it's like they live there, they eat there, they thrive there, they work there, they create there. And, in the same vein, kind of going back to, one of these values of Utah is we do want to make a better place, we do want to help people and it's not just these altruistic sayings but we actually do want to help. And so I love that. That kind of dovetails really well. I mean Utah and Salt Lake within itself of wanting to be impactful and help and live for East Ant and leave it better than we found it, of having that to support that growth too.

Erik Nilsson: 1:05:53

So I love how that it's not just this let's call it like strategic president of the school saying if we're going to get more students or more money, we have to do this. It's saying hey, let's do what we say we want to do, let's do better together and let's help people. It's almost like teach them how to fish as well, but then teach them in these epicenters and have them access to the right people, the right forums and mentors to help them get there. So I love that it's not just this idea of strategy, but an idea of we are here, this is how we're going to grow.

Geoff Davis: 1:06:26

Yeah, it opens this fall, by the way, and I really think it's going to do a lot, just like Utah was not necessarily on the entrepreneurial map not just the University of Utah, but Utah in general. And now we have LaSonde, now we have Silicon Slopes. Now you're a part of it. Right now, groups are moving from the Bay Area here, or large numbers of people are, and companies are coming here because it's so vibrant. It's a better way of life. Live where we want to vacation. The same thing will happen, I think, on the impact side.

Erik Nilsson: 1:06:57

Oh, without a doubt. So I'm excited to see that happening. We've already seen, I mean, university of Utah, I mean, let's call it Preved Pack 12, like end of 2000s it was a school, it was great, but then, compared to where it is now, it's like, oh, it's actually a place people want to come and thrive and so it's like I see this ambition of Taylor Randall wanting to be one of those top 10 schools and if you were to ask me when I was in High School yeah, cool, I'm just going to go to the U because everybody goes to the U.

Erik Nilsson: 1:07:20

But now it's like, oh, like there's the growth and trajectory behind it to be like that's not such a crazy claim to want to go chase after yeah, exactly.

Geoff Davis: 1:07:30

Utah rising.

Erik Nilsson: 1:07:31

Exactly. I mean, jeff, besides obviously working here on campus, helping students. Helping, I mean the world become a better place. I mean, what else do you like to do in Utah in your spare time with your family? Oh my gosh.

Geoff Davis: 1:07:44

People ask me how I like living in Utah. They know I'm not from here and I've lived all over the world I threw that phrase out a minute ago living where we would want to vacation. It's amazing. It's amazing. I mean I ski a ton, I bike a ton, we hike. It's phenomenal.

Geoff Davis: 1:08:04

We had tons of friends you probably do too that moved here during COVID for the same reason, like A, I want to get out of New York or San Francisco or LA, and B, I want to be somewhere where I actually want to be, not just endure where I am until I can be where I want to be. And I think I mean you're just going a little riff on Utah. Utah is so varied so you drive two to four hours in any one direction in your totally different place. The salt flats are totally different than the Wasatch front, little Cottonwood Canyon Totally different than the Uintas, totally different than Moab, totally different than Zion, totally in St George. I mean there's so much variety here, it's endless. It feels like a small country, a small European country with a lot of variety or something like that.

Geoff Davis: 1:08:52

I see it, there's so much going on and I was really surprised. I was a little nervous, moving here, frankly, you know a little moving into the heart of Mormondom, and what would that be like? What would our influence on our kids and all that? We wanted them to think broadly. And this is without having lived here.

Geoff Davis: 1:09:14

I was a student here and so I was nervous about stories that I'd heard. They're all fake, not true. I heard stories where my kids couldn't play with other kids because they weren't members of the church or whatever. Unfortunately, I still hear some of that, but for the most part none of those concerns were just the opposite and some people who have this view kind of like I did about BYU right, the Mormon tie, were not go choir pipes through the halls. People who haven't been here just think it's some insular place, not in the slightest. I mean it's maybe because of the missions, because people go out on missions all over the world. But people are very, very engaged, very aware it's not this insular place that it's sometimes viewed as at the coast.

Geoff Davis: 1:10:02

And you asked one of the questions, the prep questions, what we like about it here and what keeps us here. It's what I mentioned about the natural beauty and the second is the people. I mean, the people are really amazing. Remember the Olympics, the 2002 Olympics, everybody was saying everybody's so nice, they're honestly nice, they really help. It's true. It's true Good people, good people, yeah, anyway.

Erik Nilsson: 1:10:27

No, I echo it all. I always love getting the perspective of people who have I mean, quote unquote traveled the world, like for you, for example. I mean you've been to probably so many random corners of the country that 99% of people don't even know exist and you've seen some of the biggest issues in the world and seen some of the biggest successes in the world. And also I mean I can name four or five guests who've already had that, have had similar, probably not the same magnitude of experiences, but then it almost makes them appreciate it more when they are here. So like, oh like the geography, the diversity in the geography, the niceness of the people, the central, it's like I mean again, if you're still traveling a lot for work, I mean having solid international support right there.

Geoff Davis: 1:11:07

That's amazing. You can get anywhere. It's almost easier than other places.

Erik Nilsson: 1:11:10

Exactly, and so it's so funny because people will always have these conversations about well, I don't know about Utah or I don't know about this, and I mean. A lot of it comes up with the social issues of neighbors and strong culture of a Mormon presence, but at the same time that's not everybody and even then they're still nice neighbors. I've lived other places where you don't talk to your neighbor, they don't talk to you, and if you do, it's never a good experience. Clean place, we have an inversion, we can work on that a little bit, but I mean otherwise it's such a hard place to hate.

Geoff Davis: 1:11:44

Oh, 100%, let me, can I pick?

Erik Nilsson: 1:11:46

up on the other one oh please.

Geoff Davis: 1:11:46

Of course, one of the other things you mentioned, you wanted to ask about, is what do we need to be thinking about? And I can't remember how you phrased it, but I think two things for us to think about are the two things that make it great the environment, the natural beauty and the people. And I think we could be doing more for clean air. I think the smokestacks that are just right on the other side of Salt Lake, that are supposed to have been moved eight years ago and they're getting fined every day for now. I think we could do more to get those somewhere else, as well as other things.

Geoff Davis: 1:12:19

Mexico City had a huge inversion problem. They fixed it, made it much better. Beijing had a huge inversion problem. It's still not good, but it's much better. Beijing and Mexico City can do it. We can certainly figure it out. It's not unknown, and I think we should. And then the Great Salt Lake. I think everybody's aware now. I think that's a huge. It's not just an ecological issue, but it's a huge lifestyle issue for us. It will really change things. So on that front, I think we need to be more thoughtful with our water and our air, much more thoughtful than we have been in the past and there's a Saturday night live, some late night talk show or comedy show or something. When Governor Cox asked for a day of prayer for water, they were joking. They said oh, I imagine how that went. They said God send us more water and God's like no stop building golf courses in the desert. So there is some truth to that right.

Geoff Davis: 1:13:15

Now we're standing in. Epic year we had last year, so prayer works and we're hopefully having it again this year. So, anyway, I just think we can be more thoughtful about that and not destroy this incredible place that we have. And the second is the people. It's interesting Probably the farther you get from right about where we're sitting, the more the politics change.

Erik Nilsson: 1:13:35

Yes, absolutely.

Geoff Davis: 1:13:36

So Salt Lake was voted. I don't know if this would be something to confirm. I think Salt Lake was named the second hippest city in the world after, I think, stockholm or something. They did some measure of independent coffee shops and record shops and however they calculated hip. So Salt Lake is hip. But the farther you go away, the less that matters and the more that's a negative right.

Geoff Davis: 1:13:59

And so we have almost two Utahes and I think we need to be aware of that demographically, economically, politically, sociologically, all of those things.

Geoff Davis: 1:14:09

Be aware of it.

Geoff Davis: 1:14:09

And I think Governor Cox is doing an amazing job trying to balance these things frankly, and he's showing a new way of a Utah form of republicanism Not that I'm saying we have to be republican or Democrat, but he's not just hardcore one way.

Geoff Davis: 1:14:24

And so I think just being nice to each other, keep being nice to each other and not let everything be about politics, and realize that we have part of the reason it makes Utah amazing is we have a long history of coming together across whatever differences, political or otherwise, and building a ditch when there wasn't a ditch here when people first got here, or building a road when there wasn't a road when people first got here and whatever right, we just get stuff done. We come together, we get stuff done, and so not letting the current political polarization infect us like it has the rest of the country. We can rise beyond that, we can realize that it's really just an echo chamber because of algorithms on our social media, and everything isn't as bad as it sounds, et cetera, et cetera, and we can just continue to see each other as people. Those are my two thoughts.

Erik Nilsson: 1:15:11

No, I completely agree, the more that we can talk, because I've yet in my life struck up a conversation with a stranger next to me and been like, oh, I believe in the world less. It's always interesting when you hear again these social media algorithms, these grand messages. But then the more you interact with strangers, you realize it's not as true as you want it to be, and I think that's one thing that's always made Utah really strong is our sense of community, and if we can just hunker down and rely on our community instead of let it, like you said, infect it, then we can continue to stay strong, continue to grow, continue to be the city and solve these big problems, Because they've been solved before. We can solve it.

Erik Nilsson: 1:15:53

It's just about prioritizing our energy in the right direction to make sure that we can't, because we can't fix everything Totally. But, jeff, I want to end with two questions. I always ask everybody that comes on. Number one is if you could have someone on the Small Lake City podcast and hear their story, who would you want to have on? Oh, that's interesting.

Geoff Davis: 1:16:13

You want me to name them by name. Tor, yeah, do your thing. Who would be cool? Jim Sorenson would actually be very cool. Oh, jim would be great. He's an amazing person. He's an amazing person. Have you talked to Ben McAdams? No, he'd be another great one. Who else? I mean I'm sure you're thinking of a lot of the kind of typical people. Gail Miller would be incredible. Blake Moore have you heard of that guy Once or twice? Just kidding, blake, I didn't haven't heard your show yet, but I will. Congressman Moore yeah, no, that's great.

Erik Nilsson: 1:16:42

I mean, those are some of the strongest people doing a lot of the coolest things around in Salt Lake so yeah, everybody has a story to tell.

Erik Nilsson: 1:16:48

And because that's the whole impetus of the podcast is, salt Lake has grown so much, it's become this bigger dot on the map. We see all this growth, who's doing it and what is their story. And so just to be able to help people understand who the faces are, how they got to do it and hopefully help motivate some other people on the way, yeah, cool. And then, secondly, if people want to find out more about you or Sorensen, or more about the epicenter coming up, we work and they find more information.

Geoff Davis: 1:17:13

Thanks for asking. So you can Google epicenter University of Utah and that will bring the epicenter site, which is a sub-site of ours. Or you can look at Sorensen S-O-N, s-o-n-s-n, impactinstitutecom or sorensenimpactcom. If that's easier, you can just Google it. There will be a whole bunch of information there for that, perfect.

Erik Nilsson: 1:17:37

Yeah. So if anybody's curious about Sorensen wants to come to school here and be one of this first cohorts of impact, or if you're a student at the? U and want to come get some hands-on, experience.

Geoff Davis: 1:17:47

this is the place to be. There you go. Thanks for doing this, eric oh no, thanks for having me on.

Erik Nilsson: 1:17:51

I love your story, I love your impact and, yeah, happy to have you on. Thanks for friend. No, absolutely awesome.