Photo by Annie Lyons, courtesy of Brite Nites
When people think of seasonal work, they often think of solar panels and ski lifts. What doesn’t cross many minds is one of the most dreaded yet rewarding tasks of the holiday season: hanging Christmas lights. And with over 250,000 Utahns looking for work in December 2022 alone, Brite Nites has found a way to capitalize on both the dread of do-it-yourself Christmas decor and the high demand for holiday work.
In 1991, Brite Nites Founder and CEO Dean Lyons was a college student living in Provo, Utah, working a construction job for minimum wage. A man approached Dean at a project site and offered to pay him to take down some Christmas lights. He jumped on the opportunity and made about triple his hourly wage in 10 minutes. Two years later, Dean left his plans for medical school behind as he dove into making Brite Nites a reality.
“I think I got a Harvard degree in experience by learning from mistakes,” Dean laughs. But after years of canvassing ritzy neighborhoods, dropping off flyers and building on word-of-mouth marketing, Brite Nites operates in 11 states and is still growing. Their current CV includes stringing holiday lights for the Kardashians, Jennifer Garner and Justin Bieber; a now-expanded business of both light displays and holiday decor setups; and over 100 seasonal employees.
Photo by Annie Lyons, courtesy of Brite Nites
Brite Nites employs seasonal warehouse managers, designers and more across the country. “Hiring is the hardest part,” admits Jaime Lyons, Dean’s daughter and VP of business operations at Brite Nites. According to the Utah Department of Workforce Services, Utah’s employers hire two people for everyone who quits a job—which means hiring can be very competitive. Brite Nites simplifies the process.
“We look for good people, and then we can fit them anywhere,” Jaime explains.
Seasonal workers are drawn to Brite Nites year after year because of the opportunities for growth, incredible benefits—including unlimited paid time off—and great atmosphere. The Brite Nites team works hard to create a family at work and provide support to all employees. This care and attention is vital considering how intense the busy season can be, stretching from Labor Day to mid-February and occasionally involving 80-hour work weeks.
“People who work here enjoy high-intensity things. We’re all proud of our busy days,” Jaime says. “We check in with each other. No one feels comfortable leaving for the day until everyone has their job handled.”
At the heart of the community is Brite Nite’s core team, a group of 25 employees who work year-round to make the busy season as smooth as possible. “We make sure everything is better next year than it was last year,” Dean explains.
Photo by Annie Lyons, courtesy of Brite Nites
Some of those improvements include building custom software to manage Brite Nite’s operations across the country. “We just come up with how we can better the client experience, and then we build our systems and our processes around that,” Jaime says. With the consistent flow of hiring each season, the core team has developed in-depth training manuals and videos to make the onboarding of seasonal employees as quick and efficient as possible.
As a well-oiled and ever-growing machine, Brite Nites could easily lose its family touch—but the team takes lessons from Brite Nite’s early start, where the Lyons family would decorate Christmas trees inside friends’ houses. “We just offer really good family service,” Dean says. “There are a lot of cues that made us successful in Utah that we use nationwide. You’ve got to do what you say you will do, fix problems instantly, pay attention to the details and always communicate with the clients. Our clients are our friends.”
To the Lyons family, Brite Nites is so much more than a company for a campy, commercialized holiday. “When there are hard things going on in the world, people always have Christmas to rely on,” Jaime says.
Dean agrees. “We are lighting people’s lives up for the most important time of year to them,” he continues. “We are delivering ‘Wow.’”