You don’t meet a lot of people who can introduce themselves as inventors, but as the holder of sixty patents, Marty Rasmussen certainly can. He’s also a real estate developer, business manager, and “serial entrepreneur.” At age twenty-two, Rasmussen started his first venture with an objective befitting an inventor’s company: “We take ideas, develop them, put them into production, and market them on a national scale,” says Rasmussen.
In simple terms, Rasmussen’s business strategy could be described as “see a need, fill a need.” “Generally, I got started in these businesses because I was trying to help someone,” he says. When his father developed a product to aid in the loading of campers onto pickup trucks but needed help marketing it, Rasmussen and his father founded Quadramics Inc.
After successfully marketing and selling their product, Rasmussen was drafted only a few months before graduating from BYU with a BS in mathematics, which necessitated the licensing of their product to another firm. He served for two years in the US Navy Seabees (Mobile Construction Battalion 9), providing support for the Marines by building roads, hospitals, and airways in Vietnam.
Post-military service, Rasmussen earned an MBA at BYU Marriott in 1970. “I began to realize that no matter who you are or what you do, you’re in business,” he says. “You’re selling yourself, you’re selling a product, or you’re selling your services.” While still in school he started HappiJac Co., a producer of tiedowns, jacks, slide outs, and bed lift systems for recreational vehicle manufacturers. This new source of income turned out to be a much-needed blessing, Rasmussen says. When a miscommunication resulted in his wife, Susan, giving birth without medical insurance coverage, “I ended up with a phenomenal hospital bill,” he says. “I could have bought three nice homes for what that bill was.”
Rasmussen again went to work filling a need when a friend asked for aid after investing in a struggling venture. While providing financial help, Rasmussen discovered one of his most successful products ever: the first sine-wave tracking surge suppressor. While conducting tests for possible defenses against electromagnetic pulses (EMPs)—“like nuclear blasts in the air that kill electronics,” describes Rasmussen—he realized that he understood how to protect computers from these pulses and worked all night creating a prototype. “It worked. I had discovered the principle of suppression,” he says. Rasmussen built upon his discovery to found and become CEO of EFI Electronics, which in the late 1980s was identified as the thirteenth fastest-growing private company in America.
Being willing to fill needs when he sees them is important to Rasmussen, partly because of an experience in which he hesitated to heed a call. Driving home one night, “an impression came and said, ‘Marty, I would like you to be the next bishop in your ward.’ And I said to myself, ‘Oh, not now. I have this business,’” he remembers. “A new bishop was called, and it wasn’t me.” This powerful lesson has shaped Rasmussen’s desire to be willing to serve others. A few years later, even while grappling with his wife’s cancer diagnosis, Rasmussen accepted the call to be a bishop.
Currently Rasmussen is chair of Triot Trikes, a division of Recreation Systems Inc., which manufactures three-wheel trikes for the adaptive and recreational market, including electric assist trikes. Other companies he has led as CEO or president include DanMar Health Corporation, Tribute Music, and Access Park. He has a combined family of fourteen children and forty-five grandchildren with his wife, Carolyn Rich Rasmussen, and his deceased wives, Susan and Dana. He and Carolyn reside in Ogden, Utah, and Rasmussen spends his free time singing, ballroom dancing, designing homes, and—perhaps most of all—working. “This is what I’ve done all my life,” he says. “I love working.”
He also continues to serve others as a member of BYU’s President’s Leadership Council, the BYU Marriott National Advisory Council, BYU Founders, and ACET. “People like to do business with people they can trust, and BYU teaches integrity and personal honor,” he says. “The most important product that we ever sell is your brand, who you are. That’s what a BYU education will teach you to do.”
