"We primarily teach them about sales," Hall said. "What I try to get across to all the companies, whether it's Intel or Microsoft or a little company in Ogden, they don't know how to sell, but that's what we know how to do."

Legal, accounting and marketing mentoring also is available. "Anything they need, they can get access to with partners and people we have associated with us. We call them 'special advisers.' Generally it's free to them so they can keep their costs down," Hall said.

He envisions growing companies advancing from the E Station to the American Can Building, which Ogden city is renovating, and eventually perhaps to Business Depot Ogden.

The E Station concept also will grow. The next will be at the Davis Applied Technology College, and Hall plans to have them in Salt Lake City, Provo and Logan, as well as an online version.

Hall also is concentrating on "rallying," or getting others involved. The Salt Lake-based Olympus Angels meet monthly and consider potential deals brought by Grow Utah. The Weber/Davis County-based Ogden Angel Investors and Logan-based Cache Valley Venture Accelerator Club are among other such angel groups being established throughout the state.

"I'm out evangelizing this and having a lot of fun with it," Hall said.

Having angel investors involved means Hall can spread his funds out to more companies. Each angel must commit $25,000 and fund at least one company every year. He's organizing a statewide angel meeting, most likely in May in Salt Lake, where angels will gather to talk about cooperation and enhancement of their activities. Hall wants a flexible, nimble group that can invest individually or as groups.

"You can imagine that $2.5 million a year, coupled with what we're going to be doing, kind of gets this going, doesn't it?" Hall said.

Helping hands

"It helped us where we needed some financing to buy and sell machines," Greg Jensen said of Grow Utah. He's president of MotoFrugals Inc., an Orem company that sells used and new motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles and sells parts and accessories through a mail-order company.

"They helped us establish a line of credit we could pull from. It's afforded us the ability to buy and sell quite a few units. It helped us grow about 30 percent in revenues last year, and this year it should be about 100 percent growth. We should double in size. And the ability to do so is thanks to some of the money we've had access to."

Grow Utah also helped put MotoFrugals in touch with people in related industries or businesses.

"It's hard to say where we'd be without it (Grow Utah), but we definitely wouldn't have grown at the rate that we did," Jensen said.