Annie:
Alright. I'm sitting here with the very talented George Cardon-Bystry, very excited to interview you today. George is a co-owner of Edison House and a wildly talented pianist, among other things. And yeah, George, thanks so much for joining me.
George: Thanks for having me.
Annie: Yeah. So I don't actually really know much about you, so would you give me a little bit of background? In regards to did you grow up here, Where did you grow up, family, education, that kind of thing?
George: Yes, I did grow up here. I'm an eighth generation Utahn. So my great, great, great, great, great ancestors came across the plains. And both my parents were from Ogden. I was raised in Salt Lake City, went to Rowland Hall here, and then for college I went to Notre Dame in Indiana. So I left the state for the Midwest and I did four years there, graduated with a degree in finance, and then from there I moved to Indianapolis, where I worked for Angie's List, which is a technology company; they're now just called Angi. I believe they did a merger with HomeAdvisor, but they're kind of like a paid Yelp that focuses on home services or plumbing and contractors and things of that nature.
Annie: I feel like that was a bit more like in the early aughts kind of…. it was like up and coming right?
George: Yeah. So it was 2012 when I joined them, right when I graduated college. And they were kind of on the up and up. They spent a lot of money on advertising and so their commercials were everywhere for a very long period of time. So they would be on TV promoting their business. And I worked in a variety of different capacities there. I did marketing and analytics and product and a bunch of different things.
Annie: And is finance like a family business?
George: Sort of, I've actually never practiced finance in the tactical sense. But yes, my dad worked in finance for his whole career. So I think that kind of spurred my broader interest in business generally. As a business person, I think it's always wise to have a foundational understanding and the two tracks by which you acquire that are typically accounting or finance and I do not fancy accounting at all, so finance, it was. It's a very good foundational way to understand and think about business and business concepts. So even when I worked at Angie’s List, I was applying financial theory to more unstructured problems to help them make business decisions. It was an interesting field.
Annie: Sounds like you kind of knew in your heart of hearts that business is something you wanted to get into, like having your own business and going that route. Like hence the finance degree wasn't so much about working for Angie’s List or some tech start up or something.
George: Oh, yeah, I loved Angie's List, but it was never my goal. I have always had an interest in business. After Angie’s, I went to UCLA and got my MBA. Even going into that, I didn't have any aspirations to open the social club or anything of that nature. It's been more philosophical, about loving business. I knew that I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial the longer I worked. I didn't love the idea of my job being a cog in the machine, so to speak. That was sort of the impetus for doing something that was more startup driven and I've always been more of a creator than anything else. So that's kind of where that comes from.
Annie: I was expecting a music degree or something because your piano playing is so incredible. So that is just something you've been, you must have been playing since you were a little kid.
George: Yeah, I remember, trying to reach the keys on the piano, as like a 2 year old. And so yes it was never something my parents forced me to do. I actually did originally go to school with the intent to be a music major. So that was my original thought process. My original passion, but I came to the conclusion that it would be a difficult career and I prefer it to be something that gives me joy as a hobby, as opposed to something that I have to fight and challenge and scrap out every day.
Annie: OK. And you and your brother are both owners of this place, right? So what does he bring? Does he come from a background that sort of lends a hand and merges with your skill set so that you can…. like, What's his background?
George: Yeah, very much so. I mean, so obviously we grew up together. He also went to Notre Dame, also has a degree in finance, but like I said, I have never worked in a true finance capacity; meaning like modeling and acquisitions and things of that nature. After graduating, he went to work for a private equity firm and so his skill set is very much the Ying to my Yang. And it's a very nice compliment because it means that we tend to look at the world the same way. Our thought processes often are very similar. We're not fighting. Philosophically, very often, there's a lot of strong alignment in that way. But when it comes to the actual skills that we bring, we are very complementary. Whereas, , I tend to be more of (and I'm using this language because it's how we talk about it internally) but I tend to be more of the visionary type person who's out setting, the mission and values and I'm really ingrained in the culture of the organization and building relationships and partnerships and trying to be that leader from the front as we create this; hopefully it ends up being an institution in Salt Lake, whereas my brother is very much somebody who is process driven, he's got the engineering mind. He's very, very good at rolling up his sleeves, digging into problems. So he's more of the operation side and I'm more of the leadership side. But we run it together. Yeah, it's a very nice relationship.
Annie: It sounds like such a cool Yin and Yang. I love that. And yeah, one of the things I was most impressed with when I first joined the club is you guys have a new member night where there's a little bit of food and some drinks. And you were actually there and I was like, isn't that like the owner? What is he doing here? You know what, he’s introducing himself and getting to know everybody. And that made me realize what a family-feel that is in here, where every time I come in, I see the same staff and they remember my names and to have the owner there for the introductory thing really spoke of the culture of the club.
George: I'm glad that's been your experience. That’s what we're going for.
Annie: Yeah, yeah. Perfection. You did it! So, yeah. What made you think of Edison House? You know, I was telling you earlier that I learned after I joined here that there are other social clubs in town, but they were described to me as a little bit of like that old boy’s club, you know? So, yeah. What was your vision? How did you see what Salt Lake was lacking, etcetera?
George: So it didn't start out as how do we bring something like this to Salt Lake? It started in my MBA program as I thought it would be interesting to research the dive bar industry. Long back story that I won't bore you with, but maybe I just watched one too many episodes of Bar Rescue, I don't know. But I very much was intrigued from a finance perspective. I had this theory that was introduced to me that I found very intriguing; that you could go and buy a dive bar at an arbitrage opportunity. Meaning that the valuation that you place and acquire said bar would be different than its actual financial value as a function of the way that cash moves through the business. So there's my finance degree. So, I was intrigued by this idea and so I started doing research at Anderson- UCLA's grad program. For your thesis, you can either go do a consulting job for an existing company or you can build a business plan and so I chose the latter and decided to start researching the dive bar industry. I did a lot of research, wrote this multi-100 page application to get into the program and then about halfway through the process of writing the business plan came to the conclusion- because I was very intent about actually doing this- that I wasn't going to do this because I didn't think the research suggested that it was a great idea...
Annie: (interrupting) Yeah, this isn’t exactly a dive bar!
George: I always joke, yeah, welcome to my dive bar. It did snowball just a touch. But I came to the conclusion that it wasn't a great business from a strictly business model perspective. And in doing all of that research, came to the conclusion that there was an alternative business model that addressed a lot of the economic problems with the dive bar rollup business and maybe even more importantly, presented what I view as a much more worthwhile, mission-driven endeavor. So don't get me wrong, dive bars are great, but I view what we do here at Edison House as being very mission-driven. We have a great opportunity to provide something that's very purposeful, very meaningful for people to participate in the evolution of Salt Lake City in a very meaningful way. And yeah, so that is kind of the origin story, so to speak.
Annie: That's such a cool path! Going from a love of dive bars to here! I'm like, does he think this is a dive bar?
George: No, I'm not that delusional!
Annie: Yeah, I love that. And I think that I feel like you have accomplished such a good mix, I mean that's hardly a dive bar over there (motioning to The Atrium Bar) , but there are fancier areas and then the more casual areas. So when you show up, you don't feel like you have to dress a certain way. You can dress, however it is that you're dressed and not feel awkward. So it's accessible to a lot of different people, I guess, although I still feel really bougie saying I’m a member here, so….;)
George: That's good. I want all of those things to be the case, like feel comfortable being here and yeah, give yourself a little bit of pride.
Annie: Every time I say I’m a member it makes me feel fancy.
George: I love that.
Annie: And do you have any other businesses?
George: I don't. This is my primary focus . We do endeavor at some point to either expand by opening locations or finding other entrepreneurial opportunities. We’re ambitious, and I definitely would have a hard time seeing myself just sitting around resting on my laurels. But this is a behemoth enough at the moment. And so I'd say we're still in the process of making sure that the first one is as rock solid as it can be before we take our eye off that ball.
Annie: So now that we’ve come this far, why don’t you give me an idea of what Edison house is exactly?
George: Edison house first and foremost is a community. We do have a clubhouse and we do events but I think, first and foremost, the most important thing is that we are trying to build a community of what I call thoughtful go-getters in downtown Salt Lake. You mentioned traditional social clubs maybe taking a very particular approach, meaning, you know, the old school model is very…, I always joke it's very pale, stale and male, right? It's a lot of old rich white guys, and we have a few of those here too, so there's nothing against that. But we wanted to create a place that was a little more inclusive and dynamic, celebrating diversity for the right reasons and in the true sense of the word. Wo, our youngest member iss, 21, our oldest member is 81. We're less than 70% Caucasian, which given the local benchmark is quite good. We have members from every background, every industry, we’re 50% women. So it was very important to us, rather than being a club that was designed for a very specific cookie cutter type of person, we wanted to create a community that was more celebratory about the idea that life is more interesting when you're surrounded by people who are a little bit different than you, but who maybe also have the same like mindedness, insofar as wanting to have impact and create positive change and actually engage with the evolution of Salt Lake and really lean into that community feel. And that's where it really started. Before we had a clubhouse we threw 25 cocktail hours before we even opened to meet our founding membership and to help spread the word to help fill Edison house from the bonds of that original community.
Annie: Like before this building was built. Wow!
George: We did that for almost a year leading up to our open. And so that when we did open, it wasn't just a building that we filled with strangers, but we actually had people who had already bought into our vision of what we were doing. And then beyond that we obviously have a home base down here in downtown Salt Lake. It's a 30,000 square foot clubhouse. We hired- and I'm very confident when I say - the best architect in Utah: HKS and Emir Tursic, who's become a dear friend of ours, was the principal architect on the project. And then we hired an all-female firm out of Los Angeles who specialized in boutique hospitality named Avenue Interior Design. We really wanted to bring that outsider's feel. We said from the very beginning, when you walk in the front door, we want people to go: I don't feel like I'm in Utah anymore.
Annie: And it worked, 100%.
George: Yeah, We hear that a lot, which to me is a huge compliment. Not to bash Utah, but the idea from a mission perspective is to really help elevate the local scene, so to speak. And part of that means you have to be different. And so at the time it was just myself and my brother, you know, our architecture firm was all men, so we were like, OK, we need some female influence in here. They did a great job for us. We've got 2 restaurants downstairs. We've got a higher-end restaurant, which during the day is really conducive for business lunches and client meetings. On the 2nd floor we have a more casual restaurant, which is kind of like gastropub; pizzas, handhelds etc.
Annie: the dive bar 🙂
George: Yeah, the dive bar so to speak. And then the first floor restaurant also does a fabulous dinner in the evenings, and we do some culinary programming as well. Our Executive Chef Buzz Willey is excellent and, and both restaurants are, in my opinion, excellent. And then we've got, on the 1st floor, we designed the space to be very conducive to getting work done, so we have a morning cafe. You can think of it as adult Disneyland. You can come down here and spend your whole day here if you want to.
Annie: I do.
George: Yeah, exactly. So you come in in the mornings, you get your coffee; complimentary, you know, and then we have a barista, we have breakfast items. You'll see a lot of people doing co-working during the day. We do have a fitness center which also includes a yoga room on the 2nd floor. We have complimentary fitness programming almost every single day that ranges from yoga to HITT classes, to aerobics; we actually do water aerobics during the summer.
Annie: Sound baths!
George: Yeah, sound baths. So we have a fitness and wellness component to the club. We really think of ourselves as a lifestyle hub. And then on the 1st floor we also have a private dining space too. So a lot of the spaces are developed with the idea of getting work done. So you'll see a lot of co-working. But we also have private breakout spaces. We have the wine room, which is great for private dining and works as a conference room. On the 2nd floor we have a billiards room which is convertible to a boardroom. So you can actually have your board meetings there. We have a lot of corporate and business uses as well. And the second floor is also the social heart of the club. There’s The Atrium, which is our sports bar concept, but it's not, it's not a Buffalo Wild Wings concept. It's a little more elevated, and very intentionally gender-neutral and edgy, but really welcoming and kind of fun. It’s probably our most utilized space from the social perspective. Very busy during lunch and dinner almost every day. And you’ve got, a couple of rooms branching off from that. We've got the karaoke room, which is very popular. Private karaoke room, the billiards room where we can also play vinyl, which were all hand-selected by our membership and give a great cross section of the different kind of eclectic tastes of our different members. And then we have the jazz parlor, which is very old Hollywood. As you move from room to room we wanted every space to have a very distinct feel, so you kind of mentioned it earlier, but each room has a different vibe. Some are fancy, some are casual. So the jazz parlor is like old carpet, plush walls every, every piece of furniture is textured.
Annie: With a gorgeous custom-painted Edison House grand piano and a button to order champagne.
George: Yes, you’ve got to give the people what they want! And then as you keep going there is the room we're sitting in now, the Speakeasy, which is the heart of our entertainment arm of the business. We've got a stage where we do lots of live music and we can do panel speakers and comedy shows and things of that nature. Paneled walls and wood floors and antique rugs…
Annie: The acoustics in here always strike me too. It's so muted. It's like, it’s so cut off from the rest of the world.
George: I appreciate that you noticed that. Yeah. It was one of the big talking points when we were going through development, we invested a lot of money in the acoustics of the building. Actually the room we’re in has an isolated floor and ceiling so that it essentially contains all the sound. So we can throw a really mean party in this room and you cannot hear it anywhere else.
Annie: It feels like when I'm, whenever I'm in here, it feels like I'm wearing headphones because I can hear my own voice better. It's like in my own head.
George: Yeah, I know, it is kind of like walking into a little acoustic chamber. So I appreciate that you notice that! And then we have the third floor and the third floor is really an indoor-outdoor space. The majority of the third floor is our outdoor terrace, which contains lounge seating, day beds, and the rooftop pool outside with an adjacent bar. I think we are the only rooftop outdoor pool and bar in the state, at least that I'm aware of. And then we have a nice ballroom as well, which serves for a lot of our private functions. So we'll have members throw birthday parties or anniversaries or companies may come and want to throw corporate gatherings; we had a gala in there last night so just different functions. So, that's the club in its entirety! And then the last part that I always talk about when people ask me:
what is Edison house? It's the community, it's the club and then it's also the programming that we do here. And we do 500 events or so a year if you include all of our fitness classes.
It's fun. Everything from our staples, which we have weekly. Wine Wednesday is always sold out followed by our weekly trivia night, which happens here in the Speakeasy. We do professional programming and will bring in great speakers; all the way up to our big blowout events. We've got a Halloween party and a New Year's party and we do more dynamic, interesting things as well. Five course tasting menus… we just did the Neon Rodeo, which was a really interesting partner event where we brought in tech leaders and flew in DJ's from around the country and just anything we can come up with to really kind of elevate the experience base in Salt Lake.
Annie: Yeah, it's incredible. I find myself opening the calendar really frequently to be like, what have they added? What's going on? Just today I just before I met up with you, texted a friend was like, ohh, they got their Christmas party. December 6 let's go.
George: I love it. So it should be fun, you’ll also have to earmark the third. I'm doing a “Cardon on the Keys” in here, something I do once a month.
Annie: Oh yeah, I came when you played with Giovanna - incredible!
George: Giovanna is incredible! I've actually recruited her and a bunch of my other friends that we're going to do a variety show in here on the 13th, which should be really fun.
Annie: December 13th?
George: Yeah. I've got a band, we've got like 4 singers and we're gonna do comedy, music… a whole production.
Annie: Ok so a few random questions for ya: What is your personal favorite aspect of the club?
George: Do you mean like physical space or is it like an open-ended question?
Annie: Yeah, whatever comes to mind. I think, well, let's say it's clear that the community aspect is your favorite part. So let's be a bit more like something in particular.
George: Like a space or something like that?
Annie: Like a space or a particular event that was your favorite event maybe, or maybe even like your favorite dish here.
George: It's a very good question. Wow, let me think about this for a second. My favorite room is the piano room, and I never wanted to do it but Cardon on the Keys turned out to be one of my favorite things, but they had to twist my arm to get me to do it. Not because I didn't want to do it but because I didn't want to make it about me. There's a very famous episode of Bar Rescue where Jon Taffer goes in and saves this bar and there's this bar owner and she gets on stage every Friday and Saturday night with her band and plays and she's awful and she's the owner of the bar. And so the whole episode is about how this woman's ego has driven her down this path and I'm just like, I won't be that way, absolutely refuse, but it's been kind of nice to do that once a month. I appreciate that people want to come hear my music, but more importantly it gives me an opportunity to engage with people in a different way in a very intimate setting. I love our big parties and don't get me wrong, they're really fun and they are unlike anything that you'll find in Salt Lake but I also appreciate the smaller, more intimate moments. I've been to a handful of our make-new-friends dinners where I get to sit across the table and get to know the people in the club. And, you know, I've had members come up to me and say ‘I was going through a divorce when I joined the club and this place helped me get back on my feet’, or ‘I was gonna leave Utah, I couldn't figure out how to plug in here and I found my community here’. I see people come in here and spend every day at the club. So there is a much deeper purpose behind the people who have joined the club and have, brought that real intent. To elevate their lifestyle and to connect with other people. And the people who have made that commitment, I think have expressed to me that it's made a big impact on their life. And that is by far and away like the most rewarding thing you can hear as a business owner.
Annie: Absolutely. Well, I'll end this with a silly question, which is… you put a karaoke room in your club and so what is your go to karaoke song?
George: Oh God! I'm really not much of a singer, that's more my husband but….go to karaoke.…I kind of like In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins. It's very dramatic and it doesn't stretch the vocal requirements too far. Yeah. So I can kind of get away with it.
Annie: Ohh, well I really, really appreciate you sitting down with me, I know you're a busy guy and it's a delight to get to know you better and to get to know more about the vision for the club and all the things. And I have absolutely enjoyed my time as a member here. So, grateful for it.
George: So nice to sit down and chat with you. Thanks for making the time.
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