From running side hustles to recording podcasts, strategy student Talmage Morgan has worked to open many doors for himself. Through an on-campus internship with the Ballard Center for Social Impact at the BYU Marriott School of Business, Morgan discovered an interest in social impact and gained insights that will help him achieve his lifelong goal of starting his own business.
While in high school, Morgan—a native of Sandy, Utah—started exploring entrepreneurship: He flipped used furniture and started a ski-waxing business that offered quick, at-home waxing services, allowing clients to avoid long lines and waits at ski shops.
After being accepted to Brigham Young University, Morgan decided to try out a social impact project through the Ballard Center’s on-campus internship program in winter 2023. As he started the internship, Morgan doubted his ability to contribute since he had not yet started a program at BYU Marriott. But he learned that social impact projects need people with a variety of skills outside of business, such as graphic design or writing. Morgan says, “Even if you feel like you don’t have any specific skills, you can contribute in a meaningful way and help make a difference in an organization.”
Morgan and his team of interns partnered with Elevate Global, a company that mentors small businesses in Latin America. The idea of social impact ventures tends to get romanticized, explains Morgan, but working with Elevate Global helped him understand the unseen side of social impact. “In your head, calling banks in Colombia doesn’t seem to connect directly with your goal of helping families,” he says. “You have to reconcile what you are doing with who you are helping, in a way.”
Morgan and his team researched different impact metrics, such as increases in income or better access to the internet, to help Elevate Global measure the company’s long-term effect on client’s lives. “Even when we were sometimes in the weeds, I think that was really motivating to know the end result was going to be sent somewhere and used,” Morgan says.
In fall 2023, Morgan started BYU Marriott’s strategic management program and joined the BYU Marriott Sandbox program, run by the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, to upgrade his entrepreneurial experience from high school to hands-on practice with technology startups. The somewhat chaotic startup experience was just what Morgan was looking for with BYU Marriott Sandbox, and he realized that school can be about more than tests and homework.
Outside of the classroom, Morgan has combined his passions for entrepreneurship and social impact by starting a podcast called “Lasting Impact” where he interviews entrepreneurs who have started social impact ventures. The podcast not only helped him further his knowledge of entrepreneurship and social impact but also provided him the opportunity to learn from experienced entrepreneurs. Rather than gain a large following, Morgan’s goal is to learn more about his own passions. “If you don’t have goals to be famous or have a ton of listeners, that’s how a podcast is really sustainable,” he says. “It’s about your own interests, and that’s why you’ll end up doing 100 episodes instead of 10.”
Morgan still dreams of starting his own business, but in the meantime, he is not afraid to embark on new adventures—even when they come with uncertainty. “If you start a business, you may or may not succeed,” says Morgan. “It’s kind of a wild card. You just have to accept you might lose it all.”
But Morgan does not dwell on the uncertainty. He has learned that risks can be minimized in entrepreneurship and that while “there are a lot of bad business ideas, there are still plenty of good ones.”
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Written by Elizabeth Walker
