Striding ahead together.

• Position: BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT presented by AMERICA FIRST CREDIT UNION

DRS. Colby Frost and Jason Campbell know something about the value of great partnerships. The co-owners of Wasatch Foot & Ankle Institute became friends as kids playing sports together. They went to high school together, then college, and were accepted into the same medical school, where they both earned their Doctor of Podiatric Medicine and Master of Healthcare Administration degrees. Incredibly, from there they were accepted into the same prestigious surgical residency. Considering all of that, it should be no surprise that after they had finally finished their extensive education, they started a business.

"Ever since we were in school we've shared a vision," Colby says, "about the kind of practice we want to be and the kind of exceptional care we want to give to our patients. We're both extremely driven and persistent, and we know we can work together to overcome any challenges we might face. And the biggest of those challenges to us, and probably a lot of businesses like ours, has been finding the funding we needed to become the business we know we can be."

"As you can imagine, coming out of medical school, Colby and I both had quite a bit of debt and on paper we probably didn't look like the safest bet," Jason said. "So we had a hard time finding a financial institution that was willing to take a chance on us. That made it hard to grow as much as we knew we could. The institutions we tried to work with didn't seem willing. We felt like they wanted us to fall into place somewhere on their checklist of what makes a worthwhile investment. A lot of what we wanted to do was a little outside the box, though, and since we couldn't check one of their boxes exactly, they weren't interested in what we had to say."

"We were still extremely interested in growth, though," Colby adds. "Practicing only in Ogden, we felt like we were handling a fraction of the business we could, that there was a much greater need for our services along the Wasatch Front that we couldn't meet if we stayed the size we were. We'd been working with one financial institution for about six months to try to finance an expansion into in Davis County, but we didn't feel like we were getting anywhere. The process was slow at...