Kevin Borland had enough time on the way down to know he was in trouble.
He hit the water hard; the fall lasted longer than it should have, and by the time the shock wore off, something in his head had already changed. The accident was two months after he’d come home from a deployment with the US Fifth Fleet in the Middle East, where he’d spent 2017 and 2018 deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve. Borland was stateside, running a jump to remain current in his qualifications for an MH-60R helicopter. Suddenly, the aircraft released him from too high an altitude. He fell farther than a body is built to fall, and the impact left him with a traumatic brain injury that would end the only career he’d ever planned on having.
Borland spent six years, from 2014 to 2020, as an AIRR aircrewman operating out of the Navy’s Seahawk helicopters, a job that takes over two grueling years, IF you make it to the end of training. The flight surgeon approached to deliver the verdict in three words: “I’m grounding you.” Borland knew what that meant–only one thing. He was done.
Chief Petty Officer Tim Thomas, led Borland as a helicopter rescue swimmer out of Coronado, jokingly called the military Borland’s “Side Quest.” He had a lot curiosity and ambition, and Kevin Borland was already talking entrepreneurship and real estate on his deployments.
Retired Chief Petty Officer Thomas calls all that happened to Borland an unfortunate circumstance, but is quick to add, “I have never been more proud of a Sailor than I am of Kevin.” Thomas also adds that he is humbled by the level of loyalty and genuine care for others that Borland possesses.
Suicidal Thoughts and Recovery
There wasn’t time to grieve the accident properly because Kevin’s and his wife had a baby on the way, and a mortgage in San Diego. With a substantial and successful career that literally plummeted to an end, what came next was a long, disorienting stretch of memory care and speech therapy, with his eyes so affected by the injury that even using the muscles behind them made him sick; horrible, debilitating motion sickness and pain.
The traumatic brain injury didn’t just take his career; it took his sense of control over his own mind. Borland became “massively suicidal”; he had thoughts he couldn’t shut off and couldn’t control. At first, he tried to push through it quietly and keep doing his job to get well. His wife, McKinzie, told him it was time to fess up to what he was actually dealing with.
Brains are fragile. Borland talks about it now because he thinks it matters more than almost anything else in his story. Borland says plainly: “Don’t hide. Speak up.” He feels like McKinzie is the reason he got through it all. “She is the reason behind everything great that I have done and will continue to do.”
Finding His Path
The usual path for someone in the Navy who’s “washed out” (as they call it, meaning recovered enough to work, but can no longer carry out their specialized training) is to be reassigned to a ship. Borland asked his commanding officer for something else: to stay at his unit and stand the night watch alone, until the end of his contract. Says Borland, “I appreciate their grace in letting me remain at the command.” It was there, in the quiet nights, while he could have spent that time watching movies, that he studied for his real estate license and made new life plans instead.
That decision turned out to matter more than he could have known. He moved his young family to Utah and built a career out of nothing but momentum. With his business partner, Steven O’Donnell, Borland built Sonder Real Estate Group, a deliberately small team, just six agents. The two built a culture where agents could easily go out on their own and succeed; most stay because of the real estate group family.
Real estate gave him capital. Borland began angel investing in early-stage startups, chasing something like the risk he used to get, and feel in the military. Once he was fully healed, he also began both funding and personally taking part in humanitarian work overseas. He participated in medical training for missionaries in combat zones, matters tied to foreign military and terrorism concerns, and helped with assistance for enslaved and internally displaced children. These operations were not run through any Utah-based organizations.
For The Love of Business
Somewhere in the middle of all that, Borland fell in love with business itself. He had now built another successful real estate company, Amazing Daily, and a great life. Kevin Borland wanted to build something more so he could help more people.
In June 2024, Robert, a software founder Borland had once backed as an angel investor, and who’d since become one of his closest friends, sent him a screenshot of a hemp-derived drink and wanted to talk to him about it. Borland invited Robert to a birthday party that next weekend, telling Robert, “Let’s make our own (drink).”
Sunny Dayz
Sunny Dayz launched in January 2025. Says Borland, “Robert is a logistics and operations wizard; without him, this machine would have broken long ago, and buckled under its own growth.” The product itself is a hemp-derived THC and CBG seltzer, non- alcoholic, sweetened with agave and monk fruit, ten calories a can. It comes in two strengths, 4mg and 8mg THC, both paired with 4mg of CBG; specifically to curb the anxious, heady edge other THC can carry for some users. They developed three cannabinoid flavors: lime, blood orange, and grapefruit, each with a unique, delightful flavor.
The subtle effects of Sunny Dayz land within fifteen minutes; a fast enough onset that customers can gauge their own intake and control, whether easing into a social evening or winding down for sleep. It’s sold primarily across the Southeast, in multiple states nationally, and on shelves in storefront chains including Total Wine & More and Apotheca, a large multi-state cannabis dispensary chain. It is also sold through their online site. The hope is to help shape the kind of legislation that lets a beneficial product like this sell in big-box, mainstream stores nationwide.
The Four Rules of Sunny Dayz
A great blueprint for business, the Sunny Dayz product was built on four rules: branding sharp enough that customers choose it on sight; a clean label; a flavor good enough to earn repeat purchases; and effects that are functional rather than overwhelming. This product is built around presence rather than escape, and behind the process and marketing sits what Borland calls “full transparency.”
Borland is, by his own account, a proud consumer of his own product. “I have yet to meet somebody who doesn’t love it. It’s not like drinking a soda, and it isn’t like drinking a sparkling water, but you will reach for it again and again.” To this day, Borland lives with physical impairments from his injuries. He has overcome incredible difficulties, but with a strict lifestyle of self-care, eating well, exercise, and his own Sunny Dayz product to help make his pain manageable, he continues to work and support his family and his family’s life.
With his friend Robert, what Borland set out to build wasn’t an escape from modern life, but a brief return to presence within it. Living with continual pain rarely allows that access to calm, clear thinking about priorities, but Sunny Dayz does. Now he doesn’t have to work without a break to deal with his pain; he can put down work and watch his kids eat their mac and cheese and talk to them. He knows some people bristle at the idea of needing something to help them slow down and be present with work and with loved ones, but this product has made all the difference in supporting him to make that possible.
Let’s Do It Right, Says Borland
Borland works tirelessly to help build this business correctly: a real federal framework, with hemp sourced exclusively within the U.S., hard limits that keep products out of the hands of minors, enforced and mandatory third-party testing, transparent labeling, and licensing that separates real manufacturers from loophole artists. Taxes need to be done more precisely, and not under the 2018 Farm Bill’s regulatory gray area. With the high-growth market of Sunny Dayz, he works to play a role in the current legislative conversation.
Sunny Dayz is currently in a private funding round, and although Borland doesn’t rule out an eventual sale of this successful brand, he states: “My main job now is to continue to provide Sunny Dayz (Sunny’s) to hard-working professionals, most of them high-income-earning parents, and to other health-conscious individuals who want to consume this speciality product instead of high-energy drinks or alcohol, and those who want to lessen their intake of other beverages that are less healthy.”
Continues With a Proud Customer and Consumer Base
One of the company’s unexpected gains is the wide range of their customer base. Sunny Dayz is pleased to be able to serve people in their 60s and 70s who are able to have full lives again, thanks to this product. Borland himself has a fuller life now, where he can spend part of his off-hours volunteering coaching the men’s soccer team at Pleasant Grove High School (Utah), the same varsity program that kept him busy and out of trouble as a teenager.
Does Sunny Dayz have its doubters? “Of course it does,” says Borland, “What business doesn’t?” The answer is simple, and Borland has sound advice that all business leaders, professionals, startups, and entrepreneurs, young or old, have to learn:
“Move past the doubters. Keep going. It really doesn’t matter what anyone has to say, especially if they want you to fail. It isn’t hard to tell the difference between the doubter-noise and the people who are actually in your corner. Don’t confuse those people with the ones who want you to succeed. There’s a difference.” –Kevin Borland
Ask Borland what actually comes first, ahead of the company, the industry fight, building and managing the brand and employees, manufacturing and sales–all of the product? He says, “I’m a husband and a father of three, two girls and a boy. These life-essential individuals will always come ahead of everything else. I will do anything for my wife and children – if they don’t feel loved and cherished, I have failed.”
Image Credit: Kevin Borland