Reinventing Yourself Through Every Career Pivot | Catherine Bennett, Utah Business

🥤 BEVS & BIZ - Episode 13 - Catherine Bennett // Executive Editor of Utah Business Catherine Bennett, Executive Editor of Utah Business, joins the podcast for a conversation that starts with childhood friendship and military-family roots and winds through print journalism, an unexpected detour through Planet Fitness and construction, building a marketing business from her kitchen table as a new mom, and landing at the helm of one of Utah's most trusted business publications. We dig into the hardest seasons of entrepreneurship, why human stories still matter, and what AI means for trust, creativity, and the future of media and video production. Cheers! 🥤 Utah Business: https://www.utahbusiness.com/ Modo Studios: https://www.modostudios.com/ CHAPTERS: 0:00 Welcome & how the hosts' families go way back 2:26 Choosing Utah State over BYU 4:52 Leading the Utah Statesman & learning leadership 8:35 The teacher who sparked her love of writing 10:45 Falling for creative nonfiction 12:44 Post-grad identity crisis 14:12 Odd jobs: Planet Fitness, construction & more 15:11 Freelance journalism for $20 a story 17:18 Landing her first marketing job at Synergy Worldwide 20:00 Becoming a mom & leaving the corporate grind 21:10 Starting Backpack Marketing out of necessity 23:51 Learning to charge what she's worth 24:14 The co-working space that saved her business 26:43 Night-owl habits & burnout 28:19 The hardest season: postpartum and building a business 31:06 Infertility, grad school & an unexpected pregnancy 32:34 The bootcamp that sparked Utah Business 34:56 Diet Coke vs. water (a fun tangent) 38:23 Taking the helm at Utah Business 40:07 Staying solutions-focused, not doom and gloom 42:45 Bringing a marketer's eye to journalism 45:28 Rethinking how success is measured 46:46 The "flywheel": magazine, events & brand 48:47 Connecting Utah's business leaders 50:42 Landing celebrity interviews 53:05 AI, content theft & the trust problem 55:36 What AI means for video & photo production 58:06 The "Burger Wars" and CEO bite-size battles 59:23 The ethics of AI-generated realism 1:01:05 Utah's pro-AI stance & the need for guardrails 1:02:40 Why human stories still matter most 1:03:34 Does AI rob us of productive struggle? 1:06:16 Raising kids who can think for themselves 1:08:15 Rethinking education in an AI world 1:08:49 Closing thoughts & gratitude