Once Upon a Story: Comma's Decade Gala
We celebrated 10 years of Comma in an unforgettable night at Junior Achievement City.
This decade of growth is layered with highlights, low moments, big awards, small consistent habits — and through it all, a lot of high-quality content.
“I just feel so grateful,” said Comma’s founder, Crystalee. “I started Comma with a vision. I wanted to build something bigger than myself and find financial freedom for my family. What has amazed me is that when you invite others to help you meet your goal, you can also help them meet their own. For me, that’s life-first work.”
We’ve wrapped up Comma’s first decade with an unforgettable gala, a grateful reflection on the last 10 years, and a dialed-in focus on what lies ahead in Comma’s next chapters.
Comma’s Decade Gala: Once Upon a Story
A decade of business is worth celebrating, and Comma can do events as well as we do content.
On April 21, 2026, Comma hosted its Comma Decade Gala in Salt Lake City. This event was whimsically put together to inspire guests (who were encouraged to bring a child as their plus-one) to picture their own next chapters.
“I wanted people to come away from this event considering their own possibilities,” Crystalee said. “I wanted them thinking about what’s possible for them, and I really felt that happened.”
The night was full of intentional details to help guests really experience the promise of their own potential, from the venue and activities to the speakers and focus.
Whimsical Venue
The inspirational Spencer F. Eccles Junior Achievement City added future-focused wonder to the decade gala. This unique venue regularly helps students visualize their dreams as reality and experience a taste of what the future could be. Holding the Comma Decade Gala in this space felt like a physical element of all the dreaming that goes into building a business.
Inspirational Speakers
The speakers at the Comma Decade Gala added such genuine value and inspiration to the evening. Attendees first heard from Savanna Heyer, a former teacher who is now the Director of Junior Achievement City. Melanie Jones, the CEO of the Women’s Leadership Institute, connected real-life experience to business growth and making meaningful stories. Jeff Durham, the CEO of Gimme Beauty, brought his entrepreneurial drive and commitment to supporting women. Bryson and Lydia Beck (children of Crystalee) bravely shared musical talent and introduced their mom, adding to the magic of the kid-run Junior Achievement City. And finally, Crystalee was honored to speak to the friends, family, supporters, and role models whose attendance truly made the event magical for her.
Memorable Wonderment
Throughout the event, guests could wander through “wonderment” stations to experience whimsical inspiration. Caricature artists encouraged guests to look at themselves through an illustrator’s eyes. Mock news interviews with a professional kid-anchor helped guests share their own stories. Other guests wrote their own short stories for a friend in Kurandza. These were just a few of the stations that encouraged guests to ponder, dream, reach, and connect.
Meaningful Reflection
Throughout the event, Crystalee remarked how feeling surrounded by supporters filled her with such immense gratitude. The event was well-attended by family, friends, clients, team members, and many others who have not only cheered Comma on but truly supported and contributed to Comma’s growth.
“For me, this event was a milestone in Comma’s journey,” Crystalee said. “It was definitely, honestly, a beautiful reflection of the past 10 years.”
All the details and wonderment of the night offered a beautiful reflection of the consistent growth that has truly made Comma not only successful, but special. Inviting guests to bring a child in their lives to experience the event with them gave the entire night a feeling of meaningful reflection and possibility.
Chapters of Comma’s Story: A Year-by-Year Glimpse
Comma’s past decade was full of milestones and the inevitable lows, but collectively, those years have built something bigger than Comma’s parts. This event was a truly beautiful culmination of celebrating all that has gone into making Comma the unique life-first company that it is.
“I feel like all the hard parts in the past 10 years were worth it,” Crystalee said. “When you look back across an entire decade, the hard moments and the triumphs — seeing it all in front of me, I just felt immense gratitude.”
Here’s Comma’s decade in (an almost impossibly succinct) review:
2016
The Leap. This was the year Crystalee had two babies and a strong desire for more flexibility. She got a business license and took on a variety of projects across writing, events, consulting, and more. She started writing Alan Hall’s biography.
2017
The Sandbox. This was a year of experimenting to see what would stick, but still marked a $100k revenue milestone. Rhythm of focus: Body, Babies, Business.
2018
The Focus. The year of niching down to content marketing and working with major brands, plus wrapping up the full-length biography project during maternity leave.
2019
The Identity. The year Comma became Comma, complete with a first team retreat and matching shirts. Also, the beginning of Comma’s Kurandza partnership to support sending girls to school (168 girls and counting).
2020
The Test. The world shut down, but Comma’s remote team didn’t miss a beat. Launched the Comma blog and strengthened internal operations.
2021
The Expansion. New team members, new clients, more visibility. Made the Fast 50 list as we launched events and defined our values.
2022
Babies and Business. Comma’s first “two-comma” year, complete with big growth and big pressure. This meant hiring help and making shifts.
2023
The Shockwave. Navigating AI in content marketing and figuring out what that means for Comma. (Spoiler: we leaned in, and we evolved.)
2024
The Reality Check. Growing pains and hard decisions to keep Comma’s workload and writers evenly matched. But still — more growth, recognition, and rankings.
2025
The Rollercoaster. First (humbling) revenue dip in eight years, but growth isn’t always numbers. We expanded our reach, built community, and kept going.
2026
The Next Chapter. Narrowing our focus: telling human stories in healthcare, with a bold goal to serve 100 healthcare clients by July 2027. We’re well on our way! We’ve delivered 11,000+ pieces of content since 2021, and we’re ready to grow that number exponentially.
Milestones and Momentum: What’s Next for Comma
Reflecting on the past 10 years didn’t just make us grateful and nostalgic — we feel more motivated than ever to continue growing Comma in all the right ways. We have goals, plans, and milestones ahead that our team is deeply invested in and dedicated to.
Industry Experts: Telling Human Stories in Healthcare
In 2026, Comma took the exciting (even if initially intimidating!) step toward specializing in healthcare content marketing. For years, we’ve helped strategic healthcare marketers tell human stories that build trust, drawing on an impressive breadth of healthcare content experience across our team. After making the move to specialize in healthcare marketing, so much has clicked. It feels like the right next step for Comma, and we are feeling grateful and ready to lean into our healthcare expertise.
More Benchmarks, More Connection
Comma has been consistently recognized as Utah’s “Best of State” in writing services, and has been ranked multiple times on lists of the fastest-growing companies in Utah or in the Rocky Mountain Region.
“We’re working on being recognized as an Inc. 5000 company,” Crystalee said. “These goals are bigger than just company milestones. This is gratitude that I can be part of something bigger than myself, and create life-first work for others.”
Comma aims to not just reach numbers, but create connections. This year, we’ve continued our Marketers on Mountains series and started our Healthcare Marketing Minds series. These gatherings help mindful marketers share marketing insights and struggles, and grow together.
These goals and events continue to push Comma toward growth and meaningful connections that extend beyond business.
Thanks for Being Part of Our Comma-unity
Looking at the past decade as a whole, the overwhelming theme is gratitude.
Thank you for being part of what Comma has become and for being here to cheer us on and help us grow. Our decade celebration had us bursting with appreciation for all the support that has helped make Comma what it is today, and what it’s continuing to grow into.
“I feel very proud that I’ve never forgotten why I started this,” Crystalee said. “We’ve stayed true to that the whole way through. I feel very proud to be part of this team, of what we’ve built, and how we’ve built it.”
With gratitude and momentum, Comma is ready for whatever the next decade brings.
Need help telling your own story or celebrating milestones? We’re ready to help you craft content that meets your goals! Schedule a free consultation to learn more about our services.
