Today we’d like to introduce you to Hayden Hoffman.
Hi Hayden, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I was born and raised in Las Vegas, NV. I lived there until I graduated high school in 2006. During high school, I mainly focused on playing sports, and I enjoyed them. I played football, ran track and field, basketball, played on the golf team, and soccer, considered myself a paintball master, rodeo (team-roping), and my favorite/the one I played the longest was ice hockey.
If I wasn’t busy with sports, I was either riding my dirt bike or looking for ways to make money. I’m not sure why, but ever since I can remember I’ve always had a strong inner pull to be an entrepreneur. My first successful venture into entrepreneurship began in high school when I started a lawn care “business.” I was soon edging, weeding, and mowing 16 lawns every Saturday morning in the blistering heat of Nevada. After some time of doing this alone, I decided it was time to bring on a “partner.”
My best friend, Nathan, and I grew the weekly lawns to 24 and equally, split all our profits. While all our friends were sleeping in and watching cartoons on Saturday morning, we were learning lifelong skills (not lawn care) and making a decent amount of money considering our age and lack of any professional skills. I didn’t know it at the time, but this venture taught me so much about myself that I can now perfectly as I look back on it.
I graduated high school and moved to Orem, Utah where I attended college at Utah Valley University. I took a break from school and served a two-year Spanish-speaking mission in Alabama, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I again learned so many valuable life skills that propelled me into adulthood and set me up on a path to success. I returned and began attending school again. While working as a framer in the construction industry, I started another business that assisted me through college, this time it was in the handyman industry. I’ve always had a knack for knowing how things work and therefore can fix most things. I completed random handyman jobs in mostly residential spaces (i.e. painting, drywall, installing light fixtures, hanging TVs, electrical, etc.). This was yet another testament to my desire to build a business I could call my own.
After getting married and finishing school, my wife and I put me through the Police academy, attending at night while concurrently working as a paramedic on an ambulance crew in downtown Salt Lake City. After graduating from the academy, I switched lanes and began my career as a Police Officer in 2014. Out of necessity, I worked a lot of overtime that required me to be away from my kids more than I wanted to be. I knew there had to be a better way. I knew I wanted to start another company, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I narrowed it down to two, a Home Inspection company, or a concrete coatings (epoxy, resins, Felix-Crete, etc.) company. After a lot of back and forth, I decided to move forward with my Home Inspection company. I started and currently own/operate Professional Property Inspections which has been a very enjoyable and successful business.
I have one other employee that works for me and it is something that I look to keep working on for many years to come. However, the thoughts of the concrete coatings business never completely left my mind, and I found myself thinking about the logistics of it quite frequently. One of the main things that interested me about the floor coatings business was how I viewed it as it relates to scaling it immediately. I really did not need nor did I want another job, but rather something I could (eventually) work on/manage was something that I was interested in achieving. Home inspections by nature are a much lower profit higher volume industry that relies heavily on one specific person to do that job/obtain business.
After a lot more thinking, I decided to begin my flooring business, Epoxy Designs. I decided I did not want to do this alone, as I didn’t have the bandwidth to do it all by myself while balancing my Police career, and my inspection business. I brought one of my good friends on who I felt was a perfect fit to partner with. Together we took a big gamble by going full speed into it. We flew across the country to obtain certifications/training and then began investing our own money in equipment, tools, software, etc… knowing we would work harder than anyone else to turn this dream into a reality. We can proudly say we bootstrapped the business and were able to self-fund it without taking any money from a single investor.
From the beginning, our goals have been quite lofty by design, and we have achieved and accomplished all of them up to this point. We are the fastest-growing concrete coatings business in the state and look forward to continuing that reputation. If you decide to use Epoxy Designs for your flooring needs, you too will see and experience what sets us apart.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
For the most part, it has been a smooth road. Now don’t mistake the word smooth for easy. It’s been a fairly smooth road with what I would consider minor or typical obstacles, but it has been a ton of work, sacrificing time, stress, staying up late, waking up early, etc… I think the most difficult thing for me is figuring out the back-end of the business, as my strengths are not in software/tech space.
I have thoughts of what I want/need, and I recognize the need for certain things to be automated. However, I either struggle to find a company that can do those things, or find a bunch of companies that can do one or two things but not all of them and then they don’t integrate. It’s a constant re-evaluating everything, from processes to distributors to marketing, you name it and we’re constantly trying to re-evaluate it to see if it can be done better.
We’ve been impressed with Epoxy Designs, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
At Epoxy Designs we’re floor installation experts when it comes to the coatings industry. When people hear the word Epoxy, they typically think of garage floors and that’s about where their knowledge/imagination ends. We do offer garage floor coatings, but we go way beyond the typical epoxy garage floors. We understand that customers have unique needs and preferences when it comes to their homes/businesses.
That’s why we offer a wide range of additional services to enhance the functionality, durability, and aesthetics of your concrete or other surfaces (decking, trailers, RV pads, driveways, dog kennel slabs, basements, restaurants, warehouses, patios, outdoor kitchen areas, countertops, etc…). What sets us apart in my opinion (aside from the typical claims of great customer service and all that stuff you’ll hear everyone claim), is our involvement with an amazing charity we created. A portion of every single job we complete goes to our Police K9 Ballistic Vest fund. We have teamed up with LOF Defense who make a phenomenal product that I have entrusted for years to protect my Police K9 and continue to trust every single week I go to work.
Through this fund, we purchase K9 ballistic vests (bulletproof vests) and donate them to Police Service dogs whose departments do not have the funding to purchase them. As a K9 handler myself, I not only support the Police but have a soft spot in my heart for the 4-legged animals that help keep us safe every day. I have seen firsthand the remarkable ways these animals use their extraordinary abilities to increase the safety of their human counterparts. Even if someone is not interested in getting a concrete coating of some kind, they are still able to donate any amount of money towards the K9 ballistic vest fund.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
The thing I like best about the Salt Lake Valley is the beauty of the surrounding landscape. The towering Wasatch Mountains provide an incredible visual setting for life. It’s easy to take them for granted as we drive by them every single day, but remember that people visit from all over the world to see Utah’s beauty and ski on our snow.
I dislike how busy the valley has become, and how there are no indications that new construction/development/expansion will be slowing down anytime soon. It seems like our infrastructure and roadways haven’t kept up very well, and I wish we all had a little more room to breathe.
Pricing:
- Typical coatings cost in Utah is anywhere from $6-9 per sq/ft depending on the methods of installation and the grade of products used.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://epoxydesigns.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/epoxydesigns.co/
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/EpoxyDesigns.co
- Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/@EpoxyDesignsCoatings/featured
