John Taylor, CEO of GRIT, challenges UVU students to close the gap between where they are and where they're capable of being, sharing important lessons on identity, patience, and dreaming bigger at the Chelsea & Casey Baugh Entrepreneurship Institute.
On September 2, students packed KB 102 for the Baugh Entrepreneurship Institute's latest speaker event, "Closing the Gap," featuring John Taylor, CEO of GRIT. Taylor skipped the usual sales-seminar script and got personal, talking about identity, purpose, and what it actually takes to build a life and a career worth being proud of.
Taylor opened by framing the entire hour around a single idea: closing the gap between where you are and where you're capable of being. Rather than treating ambition and fulfillment as competing goals, he challenged students to pursue what he called an "AND" life - one where hard work AND family, career AND faith, ambition AND gratitude aren't trade-offs but a design choice.
"Be where your feet are," he told the room - presence, he said, isn't something that happens to you, it's something you choose. A fulfilling life doesn't happen by accident.
Taylor spent a good chunk of the talk on the questions people ask themselves. Most people, he pointed out, don't consciously choose whether a day is going to be great or terrible—they just react. His point: the quality of our lives is shaped by the quality of the questions we ask ourselves. Waking up and asking "why is today going to be incredible?" instead of "why is today going to suck?" changes how the rest of the day goes.
Taylor structured the back half of his talk around four lessons he's learned building GRIT from the ground up:
1. The Power of Identity & Your Story: Taylor shared his own personal creed, a list of "I am" statements he uses to define who he is before circumstances get the chance to define it for him. His challenge to students: don't cast a spell on yourself with the story you tell about your own limitations.
2. People Over Everything: Using GRIT's own growth as an example, from $48 million and 419 reps in 2021 to a projected $125 million and 1,200 reps in 2026 Taylor argued that people drive sustainable growth more than any system does. He connected that growth to mission: supporting current and future families, developing a core leadership team, and investing back into humanitarian efforts across Utah.
3. Don't Skip Steps: A reminder that impatience is often the biggest obstacle between students and where they want to be.
4. Dream Bigger, Faster: Taylor pushed students to get specific about their hopes and dreams across every category of life- spiritual, family, health, personal development, career, financial, service, and hobbies. “Vague ambition," he said, “Doesn't get you anywhere.”
He tied it together with a simple mantra: live life by design, not by default.
When it came to practical career advice, he kept it simple. He told students there are three keys to success in any job: confidence and self-belief, energy, and hard work and that no strategy or system can substitute for showing up with all three.
That message showed up in the quotes that stuck with students most:
"Be confident. Don't sell yourself short."
"If you want to give, you have to have, and if you want to have, you have to get after it."
Taylor also left students with a note on perspective, a reminder to hold onto good experiences and good seasons without clinging to them:
"Don't be sad that it's gone, be grateful it happened."
