00;01;07;11 – 00;01;22;05
Marty Carpenter
I do appreciate you being here. This is on the show. I’ve talked to a lot of people that I’ve known for a long time, and I’ve talked to people who I haven’t known until they actually came and sat down in the chair. I don’t think I’ve ever had. I know I’ve never had anyone on here who’s hired me three times.

00;01;22;05 – 00;01;33;23
Marty Carpenter
So first of all, thanks for being here and for hiring me three times. And I want to talk to you about, you know, why you did that? Why you why you were really willing to roll the dice and do that a number of times. And you do remember.

00;01;33;23 – 00;01;35;19
Derek Miller
Our deal. Like there’s no fourth time.

00;01;35;20 – 00;01;51;29
Marty Carpenter
Yeah. That’s it. Three. Three things. You sure this is the last job you want to hear? Like. Yeah, that’s the one I wanted. Now we’ve had a chance to work together for for a number of years, for a long time. And so I’m actually just interested to see if there’s more I can learn about the man who is Derek Miller and the things you’re working on.

00;01;51;29 – 00;02;10;26
Marty Carpenter
But I want to start with we first met, I think, when I came on to do comms on Governor Herbert’s 2012 campaign. So you were the chief of staff at that time. But before that, take me through, like the Derek up to that point. Where were you born? Grew up.

00;02;10;27 – 00;02;11;08
Derek Miller
Marty?

00;02;11;09 – 00;02;11;24
Marty Carpenter
No.

00;02;11;26 – 00;02;15;02
Derek Miller
No one wants to hear this. Are you just trying to take your.

00;02;15;08 – 00;02;17;29
Marty Carpenter
We’re going to cut all of it. Don’t worry. We’re not going to use it.

00;02;18;02 – 00;02;20;29
Derek Miller
This is just. I mean, because we could just be live streaming.

00;02;21;00 – 00;02;33;18
Marty Carpenter
The the France Senegal game. We could if you really want to get your. We could do that. Yeah that’s right. But we’re not going to we’re not going to do that. We’re just going to talk about you instead. But we’ll wrap up so we can go watch the soccer game if that’s what we want to do. So you’re a Utah guy though?

00;02;33;20 – 00;02;37;24
Marty Carpenter
Yeah. So well, I mean, I was born in California in the Bay area when my dad.

00;02;37;24 – 00;02;56;02
Derek Miller
Was going to graduate school, but when he graduated and I was four years old, he got a job at BYU teaching. So we made the move from California to initially Orem and then to Provo. But yeah, Utah County, I guess not born.

00;02;56;02 – 00;02;59;04
Marty Carpenter
But but raised. Raised there long enough that that’s where you consider home.

00;02;59;05 – 00;03;00;12
Derek Miller
That’s what I consider home.

00;03;00;13 – 00;03;04;07
Marty Carpenter
Your dad was in a professor. He’s a professor as well.

00;03;04;10 – 00;03;07;02
Derek Miller
My mom is an English professor. Okay. Both at BYU.

00;03;07;03 – 00;03;15;00
Marty Carpenter
What did your dad teach? Civil engineering. Civil engineering? So you had, like, a math guy at a language mom. Awesome. And that’s, like, a really good balance for you.

00;03;15;01 – 00;03;32;06
Derek Miller
Yeah. And so if I ever went to my dad with homework, math homework, he would say, and in typical engineer fashion, there’s a better way to do it. Let me teach you a shortcut. And I would say, no, dad, my teacher.

00;03;32;06 – 00;03;53;14
Marty Carpenter
Told me I have to do it this way. I want you to go to school tomorrow and tell your teacher he’s wrong. Like that was going to go over really well. And then with my mom, if I ever dared to take her any thing English, anything, I’d written a paper or something. I mean, it would come back just covered in red felt tip ink.

00;03;53;16 – 00;04;14;27
Marty Carpenter
I mean, including, like, when I was little. Like, love you notes. Like you’ve misspelled love. Here. Let me. Yeah. You’re the one that just got your hand printed. Says it’s like the M should be capitalized. Just so you know, it’s probably. So you grew up in a house. I’m guessing that if you’ve got that kind of professions for your parents, education was a big deal in how she grew up in.

00;04;14;28 – 00;04;45;28
Marty Carpenter
Yeah. Were you a good student? Naturally. Yeah. So I do remember coming home with my first report card. Seventh grade. Right. Because that you just get stars and moons and things. And my parents sat down with me and they went through it, and it was all A’s with one a minus and one B plus. And my dad said, Derek, just so you know, an A in our family and a minus is just like an A, so AA minus it’s the same.

00;04;45;28 – 00;05;00;21
Marty Carpenter
But you also need to know a B+ is not acceptable. It’s just like an F. So so there’s only A or a minus. Other than that it’s an F. So were you the kind of kid that rebelled? It doesn’t seem like you’re the kid that rebelled against that. You just said, okay, that’s the standard and that’s what you met for.

00;05;00;24 – 00;05;20;17
Marty Carpenter
And, you know, I mean, sibling dynamic has something to do with it. And I had an older brother and an older sister and they were star students. And so you just are trying to they’d kind of hosed you. You just that was the expectation and you had to step up and made it. Okay. So you go to high school in the in Provo, you go on to Biu.

00;05;20;20 – 00;05;43;23
Marty Carpenter
What did you study BYU. I started in political science. You know, this was when you had a year before your mission. So I did my freshman year at BYU. When I went to BYU, it was totally just an extension of high school. Like every kid I knew from high school also went to BYU. And one day I pulled out of my driveway and turned left and went to high school.

00;05;43;23 – 00;06;10;06
Marty Carpenter
And next day I turned right and went to BYU. And when I got home from my mission, former companion of mine from my mission had told me that you could test out of your foreign language and get a whole semester’s worth of credits if you were doing international relations instead of political science. So I did that and switch to international relations and then got done a year earlier, and I’m going to test my memory here.

00;06;10;06 – 00;06;27;18
Marty Carpenter
So you took a test to clip out of Flemish, is that right? Yeah. How was the Flemish test? I mean, the thing about Flemish, which nobody speaks except the tiny little population in northern Belgium, is not even the teacher knew what Flemish was. So how would he know if you were saying it right or not? So it was great.

00;06;27;19 – 00;06;43;10
Marty Carpenter
He’s got to go test out of Flemish. What? You got that mission call? I mean, everyone loves their mission column where you went and all that. But like, from just the practicality of the language at the time. And then. Now how do you feel about Flemish? Did you feel like I’m going to go learn this language that nobody speaks?

00;06;43;16 – 00;07;10;28
Marty Carpenter
And then was that proven to be right or wrong in the end? So Flemish is a dialect of Dutch, and Dutch is what they teach you in the MTC. And so you are learning that for two months. And then I got on an airplane and flew into Amsterdam, got in a van and drove to Antwerp, and then got on a train and went to Brussels.

00;07;10;28 – 00;07;36;02
Marty Carpenter
And Brussels is an interesting city because it’s inside the Flemish speaking part of the country, but it’s a French speaking city. So there are both French and and Flemish speaking missionaries there. I served in the suburbs, but they speak an even further dialect that’s a mixture of French and Flemish. So I still remember vividly going to my first teaching appointment.

00;07;36;02 – 00;07;54;14
Marty Carpenter
I was like, I don’t know what language they taught me in the MTC. I don’t recognize one word. I said the same, but it was Spanish, so it’s not a unique experience. But so on your mission, you had some missionaries who were French speakers in. They were in the mission to the south. Okay, so it wasn’t like would not a mixed mission that way.

00;07;54;15 – 00;08;19;02
Marty Carpenter
Yeah, French is the language I Spanish speaking mission for me. But looking back, I’m like, I really wish I spoke French, I wish I spoke Spanish, really? Yeah. Just because the practicality of it or. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s a beautiful language. I mean, you know, these romance languages, they’re beautiful languages, these Germanic languages like Dutch and Flemish. I mean, it sounds like you’re coughing to death when you’re speaking.

00;08;19;03 – 00;08;36;00
Marty Carpenter
Are they are they systematic languages in like Spanish, French, the romantic languages, you can conjugate verbs and draw a chart and say, this is how all the words end. Is it the same that way? That is that way. But part of I would I would describe it. We’re getting way off script here, Marty, but I would describe it as part of the slogan.

00;08;36;01 – 00;09;02;10
Marty Carpenter
It’s off script and on record, so we’re okay. The three viewers you had have already logged off, but the I would describe it this way, the Queen’s English versus like speaking English in the Deep South. So imagine the Queen of England having a conversation with Charles Barkley. This is they’re speaking the same language. Technically. Yeah, but they may miss each other a little bit in transit.

00;09;02;11 – 00;09;19;02
Marty Carpenter
So that’s the difference right there. Okay. So before you became the chief of staff you worked at and what do we even call it now? Go ahead. I think we’re back to God. Yeah. What was your role there? Is that how you got into state government? Was that your first state government job? When I first graduated from BYU, I did a joint degree.

00;09;19;03 – 00;09;44;16
Marty Carpenter
JD, MPA, moved to Washington, D.C. I was a management consultant, did that for several years when and worked on Capitol Hill for several years. I was in the middle of a big transportation reauthorization, which was the committee that I worked for on the House side. It’s a 2500 page bill. It’s $300 billion. Everybody’s focused on it. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.

00;09;44;20 – 00;10;11;12
Marty Carpenter
So I was so burned out after that. I mean, it was literally like 20 hours a day, seven days a week. And I got a call from our good friend Jason Perry. And I’d gone to school with Jason. I don’t know, you’ll probably edit this part out, but he went to BYU, so we were at school the same time, just played over and over again, and I knew his wife, Mary Catherine, before they got married.

00;10;11;14 – 00;10;37;13
Marty Carpenter
We were also in school together. And anyway, Jason called me and said, hey, we’ve got a young new governor in Utah just got elected. His name is John Huntsman. Come back and work for him. And I said, well, I know that name Jon Huntsman, but I don’t think he’s a young guy. I know the older version. Right. And so this was John Junior, and at first I said, no, I wasn’t interested.

00;10;37;13 – 00;10;55;18
Marty Carpenter
We loved living in D.C. we loved our life there. We loved our neighbors, our neighborhood. Our kids were in school. It was a happy time for our family. But, you know, you have a change of heart and you go through a process. And through that process, we had a change of heart and felt like it was time to come back to Utah.

00;10;55;18 – 00;11;15;27
Marty Carpenter
And then your answer to your question is, I worked for a short period of time at the Department of Commerce. That was the job that Jason had had helped me get. But then as soon as I got to Utah, Jason had left and was running. God. So Jason had said to me, I kind of said, hey, what gives?

00;11;15;27 – 00;11;34;12
Marty Carpenter
You hired me to come here, but then you’re not even here anymore. And he said, well, come work for me over God. So I did okay. And then, you know, there’s still more of a connection with Jason Perry because he goes to be Governor Herbert’s chief of staff, first chief of staff after Governor Huntsman went off to be the ambassador to China was first.

00;11;34;13 – 00;11;51;03
Marty Carpenter
Yeah. And then he was the chief of staff. And then when he was done with his time as chief of staff, you took his place? Yeah. Have you just been following Jason? And until he moved to the U. And they won’t have me. Yeah, well, too many, too much blue in your wardrobe. You can’t make that. You can’t make that work.

00;11;51;05 – 00;12;13;10
Marty Carpenter
What did you like about the job as chief of staff? So I usually describe the chief of staff role as the rule of three. So about a third of it is managing the governor’s office, as you know, because you were in the governor’s office, we were there at the same time. It’s it’s an office of about 50, 60 people.

00;12;13;10 – 00;12;36;17
Marty Carpenter
And your job is the chief of staff is to manage that office. I mean, all the way from what’s the budget to what are people making to time off and just things like that. The other third is overseeing the cabinet. So the 21 cabinet members, at least there were in our day 21 cabinet members, they report to the governor through the chief of staff.

00;12;36;17 – 00;12;57;10
Marty Carpenter
And then the other third, which is sort of miscellaneous, but it’s really all the political stuff, which I had no experience in even my time working on Capitol Hill. I wasn’t a political person. I was a professional staff. You know, I was there because I had a law degree. I was there because I had done government management consulting.

00;12;57;15 – 00;13;16;28
Marty Carpenter
I wasn’t there because of politics, although some people are. So that was all brand new for me. That was a very. And so I, you know, to say that you enjoy politics is that seems obtuse. But, you know, that was a part of it. That was all new to me. Sadistic is the word I would have gone with.

00;13;17;00 – 00;13;40;15
Marty Carpenter
Yeah. You know, you enjoy the politics. It was new because I enjoyed it. Because it was new. Yeah. Was there a part of the job that you just. You’re just so glad you don’t do that part anymore? I was I would say it this way. Do you remember the feeling we were talking about missions earlier? You remember the feeling when you got home from your mission and whatever you were doing, you were walking down the mall.

00;13;40;15 – 00;14;02;03
Marty Carpenter
You were driving down the street. But there was like, this feeling of freedom. Yeah. I mean, we loved our missions, but, you know, like, you’re on the job, right? And that’s how it was being the chief of staff. You’re on the job, and being a chief of staff is sort of like being a parent of a teenager, which you can also relate to.

00;14;02;04 – 00;14;26;22
Marty Carpenter
There’s no good phone calls after midnight. I didn’t say there were no phone calls after midnight. There’s no good phone calls. So people are not calling you to tell you how awesome it went that day. They’re calling to tell you about a big problem. So it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy a particular aspect of the job, but I remember when I was done and I went to work at the World Trade Center, which is part of the City Creek Center.

00;14;26;22 – 00;14;55;07
Marty Carpenter
And I remember that first day, my first lunch break, like walking across City City Creek Center. I was like, I’m free, I’m free. Yeah, because there aren’t as many dangerous phone calls that can come in the world or just, you know, I mean, you know, Governor Herbert, well, who’s one of the best, best men. I’ve ever known. But, you know, he was never hesitated to pick up his phone and call you at any it went any thought came to his mind at any time of day or night.

00;14;55;08 – 00;15;17;10
Marty Carpenter
Yeah, that’s certainly you to pick up. Yeah. So he could talk through a lot of different issues with him over time. And he liked to talk through a lot of those. He’s a guy who thought he he thought by talking. Yeah. He thinks talks things through. And that’s what gets him to think it through. What made you to a good match?

00;15;17;12 – 00;15;48;22
Marty Carpenter
That’s a good question you probably want to ask him. I do remember, you know, Governor Herbert had and has an insatiable appetite for details. And he just wanted to know everything about everything, including those three things I mentioned before, like running the governor’s office, what’s happening with every cabinet member and what’s, you know, all the political stuff. And I remember saying to him once, do you want to be chief of staff?

00;15;48;23 – 00;16;16;23
Marty Carpenter
We could trade places. I’ll be the governor and you could be a staff. Totally fine. And he gave me, you know, a funny look. And I said, what I’m trying to say, governor, is like, you have me and everyone else so that we can do more for you, but you can’t know everything. We know. You can’t say it’s our job to make sure that we’re telling you the things you need to know.

00;16;16;28 – 00;16;37;10
Marty Carpenter
And if we fail at that, then you need to fire us. And it’s our job to handle a lot of problems before they become the tough ones get to you. Everything else we should be able to handle what I what I just thinking along those lines and maybe taking a second to answer my own question. I always loved the fact that I could say Governor Herbert was a very principled man and how he made decisions.

00;16;37;10 – 00;16;56;15
Marty Carpenter
So for my role in dealing with the media, I never felt backed into, like I never got myself painted into a corner because I could always say, you know, I don’t have specifics on that, but I know in principle, here’s what the governor thinks. And I knew that, like, if I understood the principles of the way he thought, which I did and picked up on pretty quickly, we had that.

00;16;56;15 – 00;17;11;23
Marty Carpenter
I would also say we were a good match, because I had watched all the episodes of Andy Griffith and every black and white TV show from the 50s and 60s, so we could talk about that. And, you know, he was a big fan of monk. What were the other shows? So we had fun in the governor’s office. It was a good time.

00;17;11;25 – 00;17;30;29
Marty Carpenter
We had a good time and we worked hard and there were serious issues, but I think we had a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah. So you shift to the World Trade Center and you’ve expressed that that was a relief. But also it’s kind of an interesting, interesting path to take. Like what what led you to say it’s time to leave the governor’s office, first of all.

00;17;30;29 – 00;17;48;16
Marty Carpenter
And then second, this is the opportunity I want to go take, because that’s the kind of job you leave and you can kind of, if not pick exactly where you want to go. You certainly have a lot of options. Someone had said to me like, oh, did you ever think about having another job in state government? And this was someone not in state government.

00;17;48;16 – 00;18;08;28
Marty Carpenter
But you see, your your reaction was the same as mine. I was like, what? Why would I want that? How would you. It just doesn’t make any sense. Right? Like you don’t get to be I mean, for all intents and purposes, in the private sector, the crew of the organization, the governor is the CEO. You’re the CEO. You don’t then go manage a division.

00;18;09;04 – 00;18;32;25
Marty Carpenter
But the answer to your question is when Governor Huntsman created go out at the same time, he called for the private sector to create the World Trade Center, Utah. He was really the force behind that. Of course, the inaugural CEO, our good friend Lou Cramer, recruit Jon Huntsman, recruited him from Washington, D.C. they’d been friends back there, recruited him to come and built this great thing.

00;18;32;25 – 00;18;56;23
Marty Carpenter
So at the same time I was at God, they were co-located with us. The World Trade Center was and I worked with Lou very, very closely. So I knew the organization well. So that would be the first part of it, just why I was interested in it. But the second part of it was this Lou had said to me, because in my portfolio at God was the international work.

00;18;57;01 – 00;19;14;26
Marty Carpenter
Lou had said, I don’t want to manage any people. I’ve spent my whole career in Washington, D.C. managing people, hundreds of people. I don’t want to do that anymore. So World Trade Center, for him, it was a one man shop. I mean, it was a one man band. The brand Lou Cramer and World Trade Center Utah were inseparable.

00;19;14;28 – 00;19;39;01
Marty Carpenter
And what I saw there was an opportunity to grow the organization into something different from that. When I started at the World Trade Center, it was me. It was a part time person who shared time at the chamber and an intern, two interns. And I just thought, this is a cool opportunity to, like, build something. I’d never done anything kind of entrepreneurial that way.

00;19;39;07 – 00;19;54;18
Marty Carpenter
I know when I started at the chamber, it was three people. I don’t know if they were both full time and they were sort of in. It was bigger than a closet, but it was certainly like talking about the World Trade Center. The chamber, Lou refers to it as his closet. As a closet. Yeah. So this is where things in my head.

00;19;54;19 – 00;20;08;11
Marty Carpenter
This is why this is such a fun conversation for me. Because we work together for the governor. But then you went to the World Trade Center, which was sort of an offshoot of the chamber when I was there. And now you run the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, which is where I worked before I came to the governor’s office to work with you.

00;20;08;14 – 00;20;26;10
Marty Carpenter
I feel like we’ve basically had different versions of the same locations for our career, and we still like each other. That’s right. Go figure. We’ll see if we got 20 minutes left. We’ll see how this goes. What? What went in? I mean, I think it’s a silly question to say. Why would you go from the World Trade Center to the chamber?

00;20;26;10 – 00;20;52;12
Marty Carpenter
Because the chamber’s. My wife asked me that. Did she? Yeah, yeah. What was your answer? Well, she she said it like this. Derrick, why would you want to go from the World Trade Center to the Salt Lake chamber, the world. And so you can understand it from that perspective? Right. Yeah. But you know this because you’ve been at the chamber.

00;20;52;15 – 00;21;29;13
Marty Carpenter
First of all, the Salt Lake chamber has been around since before Utah was a state, 1887 1887, before there was a state of Utah. As as the business community has grown, the Salt Lake chamber has grown. So it really has functioned for a long, long time, long before me as a statewide chamber. And the influence of the Salt Lake Chamber, I think particularly under my predecessor and your former boss, Lane Beattie, former Senate president, just grew exponentially on Capitol Hill, in the governor’s office, everywhere else where it matters.

00;21;29;16 – 00;21;56;20
Marty Carpenter
So anyone who would know would know anyone who knew. I mean, the World Trade Center is a wonderful organization. When I left there, they had ten employees. I don’t know how many they have now, but the Salt Lake Chamber has 60 employees. I mean, it’s quadruple the size, quadruple the reach, quadruple the influence, and it serves as the statewide business association.

00;21;56;21 – 00;22;34;26
Marty Carpenter
I do want to talk to you about a number of things at the chamber. Maybe we start here. That’s your reason to transition to the job. What do you love about the chamber? And has anything surprised you about going to the chamber and saying, oh, I hadn’t expected that to be a part of the job. Every job that I had had before then, the reason I had been hired, as I was told, was that there was something in my sphere of influence within my portfolio of responsibility that needed to be fixed.

00;22;34;29 – 00;22;59;04
Marty Carpenter
That was not the case with the chamber. So it was really. I’m going to say, hard. For me, it was an adjustment for me because things at the chamber, I mean, you know, the team. It’s amazing. Team. Our CEO, Heidi Walker amazing. And I will have to confess now, in hindsight, I just remember thinking, why am I even here?

00;22;59;07 – 00;23;27;03
Marty Carpenter
Like, there’s nothing about this organization that needs to be fixed. What’s my purpose here? So that was probably the most surprising. And I didn’t anticipate like a trauma response like, hey, wait, so nothing is wrong. I just get to to be here and keep us going in this direction. And not only that, but our old office space, which you know very well, I like to call it an homage to 1980s corporate culture.

00;23;27;04 – 00;23;49;11
Marty Carpenter
You know, it’s like the CEO’s office is the corner office way in the back. Like no one was allowed to go there. It was a lot like the governor and the chief of staff office. Actually, it was like separate from everybody, from everyone else. There’s like three reception desks before you can even get hired. Security. So I remember, like, sitting in that office and I still refer to it as Lane’s office.

00;23;49;11 – 00;24;08;08
Marty Carpenter
I remember sitting in Lane’s office that first am like, hello? Is anybody here? What did you feel a little bit like Milton on Office Space, that they just had moved you to the basement, but in the opposite direction? It’s like they gave you the best of the best office, but nobody wants to know. Yeah. I mean, it was very.

00;24;08;10 – 00;24;29;15
Marty Carpenter
It was a very strange feeling, for sure. You like to be more around the people that I like to be around the people. Are set up now, of course, at 201 main, we got the whole floor. They’re awesome. A little more accessible. Yeah. So you’re enjoying the job? I love the job. Tell me what you look at right now for the business community and say, these are the biggest things that we’ve got to work on as a business community.

00;24;29;16 – 00;24;42;12
Marty Carpenter
Again, it goes to a little bit of what you were talking about, that there’s not a whole lot that’s broken, right, as far as the Utah economy. But you got a bunch of plates. You got to keep spinning. So what do you look at and say, man, this is where the business community has to be focused right now.

00;24;42;13 – 00;25;14;24
Marty Carpenter
I always look at it in three layers. And the first layer is just, you know, block and tackle. Like, what do we do all the day, every day is and that is we focus on taxation, regulation, education and transportation. I mean, these are just the four fundamental building blocks of any economy city, region, state, country, world. And so we just never can take our eye off that.

00;25;14;29 – 00;25;35;09
Marty Carpenter
Then you’ve got a second layer, which is and I’m going to say issue of the day. But I don’t want that to sound pejorative or like it’s minimizing it. These are big issues, but they’re not. But they come and go. Hopefully if we address them, they come and go. They come for sure. Do they go? That’s the question right now.

00;25;35;11 – 00;26;02;03
Marty Carpenter
Energy, water for sure. I mean, the reason I say they come and go hopefully, is because I really do believe the Great Salt Lake issue is an existential issue. And then we think about what’s happening on an international front. Tariffs no tariffs. We’re doing this. We’re doing that. We’re at war. Who are we fighting now. It’s hard to keep track of it all.

00;26;02;03 – 00;26;33;17
Marty Carpenter
And it just creates turmoil in the business marketplace, especially for Utah businesses, especially for small businesses that 99% of Utah businesses are. And they just need certainty to be successful. And we are a high exporting state top ten, which surprises most people. But we make a lot of cool things here, and we sell them around the world. And that’s getting harder and harder to do every day for these Utah businesses.

00;26;33;17 – 00;26;56;15
Marty Carpenter
And then I would put sort of as the third layer on top of that, these thematic challenges. And I would say right now, the thematic challenge that really keeps me up at night is that what we all say is our secret sauce and why we’re so successful in Utah, why our economy has been so strong, is strong today.

00;26;56;17 – 00;27;27;13
Marty Carpenter
Great prospects for the future. That collaboration, I think is at risk, is at risk naturally as we grow, because when you grow, it gets harder to stay together. And then I think it’s at risk just because of the, the, the political commotion of the day. And it’s I don’t just mean Republican Democrat, I mean just people view so much of their world through a political lens.

00;27;27;13 – 00;27;52;15
Marty Carpenter
It’s not healthy. And it it divides us and it makes it so that we’re we feel we’re at odds with each other. And so that hurts that damages the trust that we have and the trust that is required to maintain a collaborative spirit. It’s interesting the point you mentioned about how difficult it is to collaborate as things kind of grow.

00;27;52;17 – 00;28;08;06
Marty Carpenter
And I think you’ve seen that in Utah, and that it used to kind of be Salt Lake was the epicenter of all business. And still, I think you would say is but there’s been a lot of growth in Utah County and there’s been a lot of growth down in Saint George, different kind of growth than what you have in Utah County.

00;28;08;08 – 00;28;29;29
Marty Carpenter
What’s the what’s your philosophy and how you how you bring those together? Because, you know, you could say like, well, there’s old money in Salt Lake and how there’s new money in Utah County. How do you make sure everyone there says, hey, what got us to this position is that the business community worked together and had real influence on how this state moved forward, and that’s worth not only protecting, but growing.

00;28;30;00 – 00;28;34;03
Marty Carpenter
Yeah, that question, well articulated, is probably.

00;28;34;03 – 00;29;00;19
Derek Miller
The most important question we can be answering today, tomorrow, for the next year, for the next several years. So when I say that when we grow, we naturally tend to grow apart. The answer to that is more intentionality to stay together. What we’ve decided to do at the chamber is really one of the fundamental building blocks of why we created the Utah Chamber.

00;29;00;22 – 00;29;27;05
Derek Miller
We could see that the Salt Lake Chamber for a lot of, in a lot of ways, was already functioning as a statewide chamber. But we also knew that we couldn’t claim, under the name of the Utah Chamber, to represent all areas of the state under that name. It just created market confusion. And not only that, but we had a number in inside the Salt Lake chamber.

00;29;27;05 – 00;29;40;24
Derek Miller
We had a number of statewide organizations like the Women’s Business Center of Utah, like our Community Foundation, the Utah Community Builders, like the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. So that was creating confusion in the marketplace. Like, wait.

00;29;40;25 – 00;29;41;13
Marty Carpenter
Why.

00;29;41;13 – 00;30;22;02
Derek Miller
Is Women’s Business Center of Utah in the Salt Lake Chamber? So for a lot of those reasons and others, we, our board of directors, voted to create the Utah Chamber as the umbrella organization for EDC Utah Women’s Business Center of Utah, Utah Community Builders, and the Salt Lake Chamber. So when I first talked to Mayor Mendenhall, mayor of Salt Lake City, and Mayor Wilson, the mayor of Salt Lake County, about this, I said, the good news for you is you’re finally going to have a chamber that focuses on you, because the Salt Lake Chamber has been focusing on all these statewide issues.

00;30;22;02 – 00;30;29;20
Derek Miller
But you deserve to have a chamber that’s focused on the Salt Lake metropolitan region. And so that’s that’s the plan.

00;30;29;20 – 00;30;51;05
Marty Carpenter
And we’re moving. We’re marching towards accomplishing that vision. So does the Utah Chamber. Does it serve sort of as a chamber of chambers, or is it more like you’re looking for a statewide membership that goes into. Yeah. So nobody outside of Chamber World would care about this. But for people inside Chamber World, this is a really big deal.

00;30;51;06 – 00;31;14;04
Marty Carpenter
Which is, for example, let’s just say the Millard County Chamber, which I don’t think there is one. But, you know, the Millard County Chamber says, oh, great. So now you’re the Utah Chamber and you’re going to come to Millard County and take all my members away. So we were very cautious of that when we created the Utah Chamber, is that it’s not a membership organization like a traditional chamber.

00;31;14;05 – 00;31;50;13
Marty Carpenter
The membership still resides with the Salt Lake Chamber. But what the Utah Chamber does is it creates a coalition of chambers on policy issues. And this past session, it worked better than I’ve seen before in the last 21 years, where we were able to go with a united front and say, this is something that the Utah Chamber cares about, i.e. the Salt Lake Chamber, the Box Elder Chamber, the South Valley Chamber, and Miller Chamber.

00;31;50;15 – 00;32;20;10
Marty Carpenter
They don’t know if it’s there, but, you know, to speak with that voice. Tomorrow morning, we’re having the Legislator Awards breakfast. We renamed it the Free Enterprise Champion Award, and we will, for example, recognized Senate President Stuart Adams. And because this is his district will we will have there with us the box elder chamber to co-present him with that award.

00;32;20;10 – 00;32;41;16
Marty Carpenter
So that may sound like a small thing, but it’s illustrative of the bigger message, which is we are speaking with one unified voice. And you’ve had positive reception from the chambers throughout the state. That sounds like, yeah, we’re running a little bit short on time, but I want to end with a lightning round, just a couple of quick, quick fire things for you.

00;32;41;23 – 00;32;56;13
Marty Carpenter
You ready for that? All right Derek, what’s your favorite food? The one you can eat when nobody’s watching wide. When no one’s watching. Just what’s your favorite food? What do you eat when when calories don’t count? Let’s put it that way. Ben and Jerry’s.

00;32;56;14 – 00;32;57;16
Derek Miller
Pint of ice cream.

00;32;57;20 – 00;33;00;21
Marty Carpenter
Do you have a flavor? My top three. This one’s.

00;33;00;21 – 00;33;01;09
Derek Miller
Hard to find.

00;33;01;16 – 00;33;03;19
Marty Carpenter
A lot of things in three. I can only remember.

00;33;03;19 – 00;33;04;22
Derek Miller
Three things.

00;33;04;24 – 00;33;05;16
Marty Carpenter
Everything but.

00;33;05;16 – 00;33;09;14
Derek Miller
The kitchen sink. It’s hard to find. So that’s number one.

00;33;09;17 – 00;33;32;08
Marty Carpenter
I just had it this past weekend. Number two, half baked. And number three. Fish food. Okay. Favorite sport or hobby? What are you doing in your free time? This Saturday, I’m running a triathlon with my son, Max. He wanted to do this. I swore I’d never do another one, but he wanted to do it. I love riding bikes.

00;33;32;08 – 00;33;52;24
Marty Carpenter
I love trail running, I hate swimming, so later this evening, I’ll be in the pool getting ready. Do you hate that it’s open water swimming? Or do you hate all swimming? I hate that you can’t breathe whenever you want. There’s something my mind cannot wrap itself around that I can’t just take a breath right now when I need one.

00;33;52;24 – 00;34;13;14
Marty Carpenter
Well, if there’s something you should be adamant about, it’s breathing when you want to breathe. Yes. Yeah, it’s a big deal for me. If you weren’t running the Salt Lake Chamber of the Utah Chamber, what profession would you most like to try? Oh. That’s interesting. That’s a good question. What profession would. I would not like being a surgeon or a doctor.

00;34;13;14 – 00;34;29;13
Marty Carpenter
It feels like the margin of error is way too small. But I like doing things with my hand. I think I’d like to be a handyman. A handyman, okay, just a general handyman. What profession? Other than your own, would you not like to try? Well, that’s the one. I don’t want to be a doctor. I don’t want to be a surgeon.

00;34;29;14 – 00;34;47;07
Marty Carpenter
My daughter’s in medical school right now. I don’t know where she gets this from. I just think, like, to have someone’s life in your hands. Way to. It’s the risk level, though. It’s not the blood or the. No, I don’t mind blood. I like blood. You’re like, that’s the headline for the for the episode. Derek Miller I like blood.

00;34;47;10 – 00;35;05;02
Marty Carpenter
All right, give us a recommendation a book, a podcast, TV show, a movie, something you’re consuming that you say other people should know about this. Can I give my favorite. Can I do this in two questions? Can I get my favorite TV show of all time? And then I’ll give a favorite TV show of all time, the X-Files.

00;35;05;02 – 00;35;26;11
Marty Carpenter
Really? I love, love, love Files. I think it’s the greatest TV show ever made. Okay, what makes it the greatest TV show? Well, first of all, there was, you know, think about it. At the time when Fox was like, doing, you know, like only The Simpsons and The Tracey Ullman Show, and then they come up with the X-Files like nothing like this had ever existed before.

00;35;26;12 – 00;35;45;26
Marty Carpenter
So cool. And then I, you know, I don’t get so much into the conspiracy part of it, but I really dig the monster of the week episodes. Very clever. Can you watch it over and over again so it holds up like through multiple viewings? Can and do. Okay. Everybody’s got that show. Everybody’s got that show. I would not have that would not have been my guess if you had said that.

00;35;45;26 – 00;36;02;23
Marty Carpenter
So that’s something you say people should go back and check on that. That’s your favorite TV show. What’s something that you would recommendation? The recommendation. We were talking about it before we started the book that I gave you when I was the chief of staff, and you were the communication sector camera. So we can. It’s the endurance. I can’t do it.

00;36;02;25 – 00;36;25;00
Marty Carpenter
Yeah, it’s the black one, right? I noticed that you’ve got the book that I gave you. Yeah, it’s been there for multiple episodes. We didn’t just bring it. It’s the best book I’ve ever read. I’m sure 99% of the people who watch or listen to this have read The Endurance. But for the one person who hasn’t, that’s. That’s my favorite book behind the Book of Mormon.

00;36;25;02 – 00;36;52;15
Marty Carpenter
Last one. What’s the best piece of advice that current Derek Miller would go back and give teenage Derek Miller? See, the thing is, is that this was supposed to be under the category of keep it light, but this is actually a pretty deep question. I would say when I got out of junior high and moved into high school, like I felt like the rules of the game had changed and no one had told me.

00;36;52;15 – 00;37;17;14
Marty Carpenter
And like everybody that was friends before, like suddenly they weren’t all friends anymore. And my analytical brain, like, couldn’t wrap itself around this like way what happened and if I and so I think probably at the end of my sophomore year, in the beginning of my junior year, I kind of checked out, not out of like, school, but like out of the social scene, the social scene.

00;37;17;16 – 00;37;36;26
Marty Carpenter
And I would go back to my, my self now, would go back to my past self and say, don’t check out. Yeah, well that’s good advice. Don’t check out a good one to go. One thing we didn’t cover that I that I’ve always admired about you is your ability to remember, like, everything you hear. Is that a thing?

00;37;36;27 – 00;38;04;02
Marty Carpenter
Like an audio. Because, you know, you have like, you could anything you read, you hear that about people. But I’ve often wondered if or if they see it on TV or something. But, you know, traffic. I really feel like I have an audio graphic memory. I know this from some of those late night Herbert administration type phone calls of like, well, hey, we’re doing this and doing this, and I’m tired and I’m at the end of the day and I get to deal with a bunch of reporters and you get to deal with just me among with 300 other people across the state government.

00;38;04;02 – 00;38;25;12
Marty Carpenter
But and you could pick out a detail and say, well, it’s not what we said earlier. We said this. I’m like, well, okay. I’m only laughing because I’m not going to let my wife watch this. Yeah. She won’t. I’m going to send it directly to her. So no, because I’m pretty sure like two years ago when we had this conversation, I.

00;38;25;15 – 00;38;45;25
Marty Carpenter
Yeah, no, this does not play well in marriage. But you only use that skill now at work. Remember a lot of things. I also would say I love the story you told about telling Governor Herbert. Do you want to be the chief of staff? Because I had not. That seems like one where you have to just sort of draw a little bit of a line in the sand, say, this just can’t work this way.

00;38;45;25 – 00;39;05;08
Marty Carpenter
And I had one of those, probably about a, I’d say 3 to 5 weeks into working in the governor’s office. And that was the governor would, at about 5:00, start looking at his iPad and he’d see a headline or something in a story or, heaven forbid, a comment somewhere. And then he would call and say, we got to change this.

00;39;05;08 – 00;39;20;24
Marty Carpenter
That’s not right. This isn’t true. And I, for the first little bit, I think for maybe like the first week or two, I tried and I would call and I’d argue with the reporter and I’d get sent to an editor and argue with an editor. And sometimes I had success and would change them, and sometimes I didn’t. And it just got really quickly, like, we can’t do this.

00;39;20;25 – 00;39;41;07
Marty Carpenter
I’ve only got so many bullets in the chamber, I can’t fire this every time. So I had to have that conversation and say a couple things. Please don’t read comments. Yeah, those aren’t people were worried about right now. And secondly, we just got to pick and choose our spots and had to kind of say their threshold is is it inaccurate to say this not is it exactly how you would write it?

00;39;41;08 – 00;39;46;10
Marty Carpenter
And we came to a better understanding and then I liked the job a lot better. My, my version of.

00;39;46;11 – 00;40;02;01
Derek Miller
That was the next morning after he’d had that conversation with you, he’d come in and hand the paper to me and say. This person who said that they disagreed with me here, I want you to call them. I want to meet with that person. I’m sure I could convince them that.

00;40;02;03 – 00;40;03;02
Marty Carpenter
If you had had.

00;40;03;02 – 00;40;03;10
Derek Miller
Enough.

00;40;03;10 – 00;40;04;05
Marty Carpenter
Time.

00;40;04;08 – 00;40;05;04
Derek Miller
I could convince them.

00;40;05;05 – 00;40;11;02
Marty Carpenter
And you had to say, I’m sure you can, but we’ve got to work at scale. It’s a whole state. We can’t do one by one.

00;40;11;03 – 00;40;12;22
Derek Miller
And we’re not talking about like the Senate.

00;40;12;22 – 00;40;35;12
Marty Carpenter
President said. We’re talking about like Joe Sixpack said, he didn’t agree with this guy who I don’t know. We’ve got to go change that. You can’t do that. You can’t do it. You got to work at scale. And so he was so much fun to work with. But there were a few of those we had to go. And as I like to tell him a lot along the way, a number of times, not just him, but other people in the administration, look, we’re in the middle of a term.

00;40;35;12 – 00;40;49;10
Marty Carpenter
We’re going to find 100 more ways to make people mad. They’re not even going to remember this one. So let’s just move on. We can make people a lot more mad. We just we just got to time it so they love us at the right time. That’s what we’re shooting for. Derek, thanks so much for the conversation with you.

00;40;49;11 – 00;41;11;20
Marty Carpenter
Thanks. Thanks, Marty. Back channel is an earth bound strategy production, and as a reminder, you can subscribe to the audio version of our show wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok were everywhere, as at Backchannel Utah. You can find us online at Backchannel Utah. And now we have video on our Apple podcast as well, so go check that out.

00;41;11;22 – 00;41;27;05
Marty Carpenter
Special thanks to Derek Miller. What a great conversation. I really had an enjoyable time talking to him about some of the times when we work together, maybe commiserating a little bit about what it’s like to work in the governor’s office, though. It was an awesome opportunity for me, and certainly one you can tell from the conversation that he really enjoyed as well.

00;41;27;05 – 00;41;46;28
Marty Carpenter
And it’s really interesting to see Derek now running the Salt Lake Chamber of the Utah Chamber as president and CEO there, because I had worked there for a while, and I just know how important and how influential the business community can be when they come together and figure out the issues that are important to our economy and actually how helpful that is.

00;41;47;02 – 00;42;05;29
Marty Carpenter
I can attest to that from time in the governor’s office, how helpful it is to have a business community that’s engaged on big issues and will come together and speak clearly about what’s important to them as business owners and what’s important then to the state as an economy at large. Really great conversation. Grateful that Derek would stop by and do that with us.

00;42;06;00 – 00;42;09;15
Marty Carpenter
We’ll be back next week with another episode of Back Channel.