September 17th, 2021

Lelu and I secretly planned this party over about six months. We went to venues, met with our amazing party planner, made the guest list, designed the invites, collected RSVPs, and planned food and decor for the big event. The kids all made it! Master D, Aub and Rel all flew in for the party. So many people came. That morning Cinco got sick and was vomiting and pooping blood so B and I sat in an emergency Vet hospital for 6.5 hours. While we were waiting, I blew it and told him we had something planned that night and I was very concerned we weren’t going to make it. I didn’t tell him what. We got home just in time to get dressed and I told him to dress like a nice dinner. When we pulled up to the Venue next to Texas Roadhouse, he said “Texas Roadhouse is a nice dinner??” We rode the elevator with his assistant Robyn, so he was really on to me and walked into an amazing turnout.

This is Chuck Roberts, B’s oldest business friend from the early 90’s attending the NCRA conferences. He’s the same one who went on the 3 week bike ride across Montana into Idaho last summer. They were the only ones not drinking at the conventions and realized they were both LDS. He lives in Northern California and made it out to the party.

I wrote out a toast that I planned on practicing throughout the day but we were at the Emergency Vet. It wasn’t very polished but here it is:

The legend goes that when Barton was born, his dad was impressed by a CEO of a big oil company whose name was Barton Taylor and thus began our Barton’s destiny to be an  entrepreneur. His first business venture at age 5 or 6 was picking and loading extra vegetables into his little red wagon from his grandma’s garden to sell to his neighbors door to door.  Every week he learned to budget with her when they would count pennies to go to Sizzler. As a teenager, he was humbled and developed empathy and understanding for the process and products at the heart of running a business in the factory at his father’s printing company, Tayco Business Forms.  He wore many hats from janitor to running a printing press to driving the big delivery truck and delivering forms all over Los Angeles making approximately $2.00 per hour.  Once he set off for college, he knew that the moment school got out for the summer he’d be back in that factory in California forty hours a week without a vacation (Tallon got a taste of the experience this summer working in the factory). While in his junior year at BYU, he started picking up some jobs painting houses figuring out that he made much more than $2.00 hour.  He went home for that summer and started his first official business – with a business license, a checking account and his first chosen true entrepreneurial venture “Barton’s Custom Painting”.  For him, this was a blessing but also a curse since he made so much money that summer that when he went back up to school – he thought life was passing him by sitting in class and if you mix in a little ADD and a lot of itching to make his way in the world: He quit school, went back to California twenty-two credits short of graduating, and began adulting. He bought a home, worked a few years and made enough to go on a three month long European adventure, and that’s about when he realized he really didn’t want to work in construction anymore. About the same time, I entered his world in 1988 to be his witness for his rise to greatness.  He bought some slacks, ties, white shirts, — how many times have any of you seen him in a white shirt and tie? He humbled himself again to work for his dad’s company – this time in sales – for peanuts, plus commission if he made any sales.  His sales territory was LA with a Thomas guide – no GPS – and his previous delivering experience. He cold-called, had many rejections to his face, no email, long commutes, running out of gas the day

after the LA riots near a burned up gas station. Frustrations, fears and hardships slowly but surely he was learning, building, and growing. I believe this was the place he really learned doggedness, tenacity and overcoming his fears. He finally got some good accounts that paid the bills, like Neutrogena and LA Gear and he met Perry Cohen of Chase Credit. Perry owned a software company that serviced Mortgage Credit reporting companies and he liked Barton’s persistence and starting referring him to his customers.  Barton found his niche in selling them their mortgage forms.  He started attending conferences like National Credit Reporting Association as a vendor – and later served as their president for two years.  Little did we know it at the time but this set our life on the TazWorks trajectory.  He met and sold to many small business owners across the country, many of whom are TazWorks customers. It’s here that he really learned and cultivated friendships and camaraderie.  At the same time, laser printers were becoming a more accessible thing  and on their way to putting printing companies out of business. They were actually really expensive back then. Barton also got a car phone and it cost us a dollar a minute.  We would talk for 30 seconds if it was an emergency. 

He could see business forms were going to become a thing of the past, his dad’s business was shrinking and he needed to adapt. Perry encouraged Barton to stop selling forms and open a mortgage Credit Reporting company using Perry’s software.  We had two kids and a mortgage.  We knew very little about Credit Reporting. In 1994, It seems almost trite to say we took a leap of faith packed up our stuff and moved to an apartment in Utah, renting our home, since California was saturated with Credit Reporting companies and real estate was suffering. This is where he learned faith, hope and a little more doggedness.  We maxed our credit cards, borrowed a little money, lived on very little and opened our doors as Far West Credit.  We hired one processor who knew what she was doing. She taught me how to do reports and Barton went out to sell, sell, sell.  We survived our first customer not paying us the $3000 bill they owed and closed their doors. We sold a car to make payroll. There was, no joke, two murders next to our office space. But we met & hired Wanell – a BIG Congrats to her too! I could write a whole other speech for her.  We also hired Kensie as an eighteen year old. He learned to choose great people to work on his team.  in 1999, Barton could see the future and he believed background screening was the way to adapt and survive the ups and downs of interest rates.  While still running Far West – he started Consumer Credentials which morphed into what we now know as Peopletrail. This is when his cultivated entrepreneur genius really showed up and he recognized there was no good software available for background screening. 

I love this quote from Ghandi:

Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”

TazWorks definitely began as a belief and Barton made it his destiny,  He eventually sold both Far West and Peopletrail and made TazWorks his focus. He met and created partnerships with the technical skills needed – first Eric Zimmerman and then Scott Kimball. All of this preparation I’ve summarized super quickly as: knowing the product needed; the budgeting; the willingness to work for peanuts and do all the jobs; the finance student; the painting color expert and small business owner; the business forms designer translating the style and ease of use of computer software; the camaraderie of small business owners becoming customers; choosing great people to work with; and really being able to use his creativity he’d had all along made for the awesome company we passed on this past December. He couldn’t have done it without most of you and we hope you enjoy the party.  I want to express our tremendous gratitude to everyone who played a part in his story.  He’s told me that he wished he could live many lives because he has enough ideas for businesses that he’d need many lives to be able accomplish them all.  In my opinion, he’s accomplished more than I could have ever even dreamed about.  Raise a glass to my hero – the most visionary, budget conscious, tenacious, fearless, hopeful, dogged, social, creative, successful entrepreneur and business man – you REALLY deserve retirement!