In the early 1850s, Godbe was dispatched to San Francisco, California, acting as Williams' agent and perhaps forming ties with John M. Horner, a Mormon businessman in the city.

In 1854, Godbe traveled east with Williams' express mail entrepreneur Ben Holladay, returning with 22 wagons of merchandise to start his own sundry and drug store, supposedly the first between the Missouri River and San Francisco.

In 1868, Godbe and other Mormon merchants began criticizing the economic demands and policies of Brigham Young in Utah Magazine, a periodical that would eventually become The Salt Lake Tribune.

That same year, Godbe traveled with his friend (architect, publisher, and fellow Latter-day Saint) Elias L. T. Harrison on an extended business trip to New York.

[1] In New York, the two men began attending séances in the hopes of obtaining wisdom and direction from former LDS leaders such as Joseph Smith and Heber C. Kimball who had died.

Through the services of a spiritual medium, the men claimed to receive visitations from both Joseph Smith and Heber C. Kimball; also Peter, James, John, and Solomon from the Bible; and finally the German naturalist Alexander Humboldt.

[2] At the same time, Godbe believed that political reform—namely breaking Brigham Young's control over secular matters in the territory—could help spur religious reform.

Godbe, pressured in retail by LDS-backed businesses like Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution, began running out of liquid assets by 1871 when he had to sell a mine claim near Ophir, Utah to repay his debts.

Godbe remained in Salt Lake City in spite of being a social outcast both from Latter-day Saints and from non-Mormons alarmed with his continued practice of polygamy.