Episode Questions and Answers
Who is Makayla Adams?
Makayla Adams is the founder of Engage & Empower, a Salt Lake County women in business networking community for female entrepreneurs. Makayla Adams also owns an insurance agency and a real estate brokerage in Utah, and built Engage & Empower to close the persistent gap in women-owned business support across the state.
What is Engage & Empower?
Engage & Empower is a women in business networking community in Salt Lake County built to help female entrepreneurs grow personally and financially through weekly networking meetings, monthly member happy hours, quarterly expert-led sessions on social media, branding, and AI, and an annual vision board party. Visit engageandempowerslc.com.
Why is there a gap for women-owned businesses in Utah?
Utah ranks high in overall entrepreneurship but low in women-owned businesses. Makayla Adams and Peter Anthony attribute the gap to access, fewer rooms, fewer recurring collaborations, and fewer trusted networks built specifically for female entrepreneurs. Engage & Empower exists to create that room, that cadence, and that collaboration on purpose.
How do I join the Engage & Empower community?
Visit engageandempowerslc.com to learn about meeting locations and times, follow the Utah Women in Business Network on Facebook, and follow Makayla Adams on Instagram at @empowerhouse.bymakayla. Networking groups meet weekly at varying locations and times, with monthly happy hours and a year-end vision board party.
Where is Utah Business Spotlight filmed?
Utah Business Spotlight is filmed in Draper, UT 84020. The show is produced by The INCubator AI Marketing Agency and hosted by Peter Anthony.
Episode Transcript
00:00 Why the women-owned business gap still matters
Makayla Adams opens with the data point that frames the entire conversation: Utah ranks high for entrepreneurship overall but low for women-owned businesses. Some call it luck, some call it circumstance, Makayla Adams calls it work, and the room you choose to do it in.
00:33 A business community built for female entrepreneurs
Peter Anthony introduces Makayla Adams as the founder of a Salt Lake County networking community changing what is possible for women business owners. He invites listeners to subscribe, comment, and engage, even with negative feedback, because momentum is built in the conversation, not the silence.
01:40 The idea behind Engage & Empower
Makayla Adams names the community: Engage & Empower, a women in business networking group focused on creating real experiences for women-owned businesses. Peter Anthony calls out the brand: two clear outcomes baked into the name, strong SEO, and the kind of clarity most entrepreneurs miss.
03:23 Why women-owned businesses still face a real gap
Makayla Adams confirms the gap is structural, not motivational. She is surrounded by hard-working entrepreneurs of every gender, but the women-owned business support system in Utah has historically lacked recurring rooms, trusted collaborators, and access to the conversations that move business forward.
04:31 Attention, authority, and the conversion problem
Peter Anthony unpacks an uncomfortable marketing truth: women business owners often get rewarded for engagement instead of authority. Likes are not leads. Conversions come from authoritative positioning, clarity, voice, and command of the value proposition, not from algorithm-friendly aesthetics.
07:13 Networking styles, feminine energy, and business power
Makayla Adams refines the frame. Women often gather around creative, nurturing experiences while men gather around adrenaline-driven activities like golf and biking. Both build trust, but the activities that produce decisions and the activities that produce comfort are not always the same. Feminine and masculine energy can both run a business, and the strongest rooms know how to blend them.
09:35 Why adrenaline and decision-making change the room
Peter Anthony explains the neuroscience play: adrenaline forces decisions. Skydiving, hard workouts, or any high-energy shared experience pulls a group out of nurture mode and into commitment mode. Makayla Adams agrees, the room that produces the highest-quality decisions is rarely the calmest one.
11:01 Peter Anthony's origin story and why freedom matters
Peter Anthony shares the backstory: born in Brooklyn, dual-citizen with Peru, trapped in Lima as a child with his mother and brother because his father refused to sign the exit papers. Growing up on welfare, watching his brother sit on a banana that became their only food for the day, watching his mother kneel and pull gravel from the pieces, that is the moment Peter Anthony hard-wired his life mission to help others find financial freedom.
14:22 Business is Darwinian and the room matters
Peter Anthony reframes the disparity: business in the United States is Darwinian, but it is not bro-against-women, it is bro-against-everyone-else. He credits female mentors like Teresa Santman and Utah CEO Jane Craig as the operators who taught him how to play prepared, win deals, and build a real company. Strong women win in business when they walk in expecting to win.
16:27 Breaking into Utah's business circles
Peter Anthony, five years into Utah, reflects on how hard it is to break into Utah's bro culture as an outsider. The rooms are not closed by gender, they are closed by familiarity. Makayla Adams confirms it: people gravitate toward their people, which is exactly why intentional, recurring rooms like Engage & Empower matter so much for female entrepreneurs in Salt Lake County.
17:47 Confidence starts with clarity and value
Makayla Adams names what really separates the business owners who scale from the ones who stall: belief in self, supported by clarity of value. Peter Anthony layers in the marketing principle, every successful operator knows who they are, what they offer, and why the market should care. That clarity drives the speed and confidence of every decision that follows.
19:15 Forced collisions create better business ideas
Peter Anthony floats a deliberate experiment: take his predominantly male business circle and combine it with Engage & Empower for a collaboration sprint. Makayla Adams agrees, the strongest ideas emerge when masculine and feminine, logical and creative, are forced to collaborate inside the same room.
21:50 Happy hours, Paris, and building presence without phones
Makayla Adams credits a trip to Paris for the new monthly happy hour format inside Engage & Empower. She watched professionals gather after work, espresso, cheese, conversation, no phones, and brought that intentional presence back to Salt Lake. The happy hours blend business, life, and real connection without the screen tax.
23:34 Vision boards, growth, and what transformation looks like
Makayla Adams names her favorite event of the year: the Engage & Empower vision board party. It closes one year and opens the next, draws the most visitors of any event, and forces every attendee to articulate where she is going. Peter Anthony connects it back to his agency's branding work, the vision board is a business strategy tool disguised as a creative ritual.
27:10 The questions every business owner needs to ask
Makayla Adams closes with the framework Engage & Empower returns to every month: What phase of business am I in? Where am I really trying to go? Who is in my room? Members collaborate, share what they have learned across different seasons of business, and lift each other into the next phase. Visit engageandempowerslc.com, follow the Utah Women in Business Network on Facebook, and find Makayla Adams on Instagram at @empowerhouse.bymakayla. Utah Business Spotlight is produced by The INCubator AI Marketing Agency and filmed in Sandy, Utah.
