Hey, I’m Nik. Welcome. I’m a husband, father, builder, disciple of Christ, and a big BYU fan.

TL;DR

I’m Nik Anderson, a small-business entrepreneur, husband, father of five, builder, member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, disciple of Jesus Christ, and big BYU fan. My faith is central to who I am and how I try to live.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of Group 114, a Utah hospitality company that operates wedding and event venues across the state, along with other businesses serving the event industry. My wife, Kyrstin, and I started with one venue that opened just before the COVID shutdowns. The shutdowns nearly destroyed the business and, as a fun little side effect, helped spark my active involvement in politics. But that is a tangent for another day.

We kept building, and the company has since grown into a team of more than 70 Utahns.

My faith and family shape how I see the world. I believe in freedom, responsibility, self-reliance, and playing the long game. This is where I share my thoughts about entrepreneurship, faith, family, freedom, politics, interesting ideas, BYU sports, and the lessons I learn along the way.

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The Longer Version

I’m Nik Anderson. I’m a husband, a father of five, a builder, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a disciple of Jesus Christ, and a lifelong BYU fan. My faith is central to how I see the world, make decisions, and try to serve others. I’m also an entrepreneur who loves turning ideas into real businesses.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of Group 114, a Utah-based hospitality company that operates wedding and event venues across the state. I also operate other businesses serving the event industry.

My wife, Kyrstin, and I started with a single venue that opened in February 2020, just before the world shut down. Not exactly ideal timing.

The COVID shutdowns nearly destroyed the business before it had a chance to get started. That experience also helped spark my active involvement in politics. It turns out that watching the government shut down your brand-new business has a way of making public policy feel a little less theoretical.

Anyway, back to the business.

We made it through, kept building, and eventually grew from that one venue into a company that employs more than 70 Utahns.

I am proud of what we have built, but business is only one part of my story.

My discipleship and my family shape how I see the world, how I make decisions, and how I hope to leave my mark. I believe in freedom, personal responsibility, self-reliance, and the dignity that comes from building something of your own. I believe our decisions should account not only for the present, but also for the generations that will come after us.

I believe in playing the long game.

The greatest legacy I will ever leave behind will not be a company, a building, or a balance sheet. It will be my family, my faith, and the kind of people my children become.

Still, I want the businesses I build to matter. I want them to strengthen the communities they serve, provide meaningful opportunities for the people who work there, and create places where families can celebrate the moments that shape their lives. I want my customers, employees, partners, and neighbors to be better off because our paths crossed.

More broadly, I hope to contribute to a freer, more responsible, and more forward-looking society. I want to plant trees whose shade I may never sit beneath.

This site is where I share my thoughts about entrepreneurship, faith, family, freedom, politics, leadership, interesting ideas, the occasional BYU victory, and the lessons I learn along the way.

I’m not writing because I have everything figured out. I definitely don’t.

I write because writing helps me think clearly. I also hope that my children, grandchildren, or some future generation might one day stumble across these words and understand what I believed, what I was trying to build, and why it mattered to me.

If they can look back and say that Nik Anderson planted good seeds, sacrificed for something bigger than himself, and helped leave them a stronger foundation to build upon, that would be a legacy worth having.