S519 – A New Platform for Selling an Online Business With Kyle Kuderewski

• (00:37) – Show intro and background history
• (01:36) – Deeper into his career background
• (03:24) – Understanding his business model
• (09:05) – A bit about his clients
• (15:13) – How works his business in practice
• (18:32) – How the investors are getting paid
• (21:15) – What is the big thing he is working on today
• (22:07) – Do investors need to be accredited in this model?
• (22:35) – A key takeaway from the guest
• (31:53) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Show Intro

Introducing Payback Time, the podcast for entrepreneurs looking to build and scale their startups, gain access to actionable tips, proven strategies, and valuable data that can help you avoid mistakes, skyrocket sales, and optimize profits. Your business breakthrough may just be an episode away.

 

[00:00:18.180] – Guest Intro

My next guest started a unique private equity company that allows entrepreneurs to sell their business and at the same time create a reoccurring revenue stream for investors. No matter if you’re an entrepreneur, an aspiring entrepreneur, or an investor, this episode is packed full a ton of money-making tips. Please welcome Kyle Kuderewski.

 

[00:00:37.440] – Sean

Kyle, welcome to the show.

 

[00:00:38.780] – Kyle

Hey, Sean. Thanks for having me.

 

[00:00:40.810] – Sean

Yeah, good to have you here. So before we dive into what you’re working on today, could you tell us something unique about yourself that most people don’t know.

 

[00:00:49.340] – Kyle

I have a fun one, actually. I like the answer to this one. My fun fact about Kyle is, several years ago, I biked across America from the Golden Gate Bridge to the capital in DC for people with disabilities. It was called The Journey of Hope, and that’s my fun fact.

 

[00:01:08.130] – Sean

That is a fun fact. Now, I have to say this, in the last few months, there was one other guest that did the same thing.

 

[00:01:15.490] – Kyle

Awesome. Did they go in the same direction? Do you remember?

 

[00:01:18.350] – Sean

I believe it was California to New York.

 

[00:01:23.930] – Kyle

I don’t think- Okay, so it’s similar. We started on the Golden Gate Bridge and ended on the capital. So, yeah, I don’t know how long I can keep claiming this. That was when I was back in school, but I’ll do it for as long as I can.

 

[00:01:35.140] – Sean

That’s awesome. I love that story. All right, well, let’s go ahead and dive in. If you could take a few minutes and tell us about your career background.

 

[00:01:42.440] – Kyle

Sure. Yeah. So my name is Kyle Koudersky. I grew up in Tennessee, and pretty traditional path. I went to engineering school, mechanical engineering undergrad. And I like to say I’m an engineer turned investor. So I got out of school, got into a large corporate America role in project management and engineering. I did my master’s in engineering. That company supported me financially to do that on nights and weekends, which was a blessing. But I always knew I didn’t want to be a cog in the corporate wheel, for lack of a better term. So I did that for about a decade. I saved up money to start a side hustle, and I actually got into real estate investing pretty heavily. I still own some vacation rentals near the East Coast or on the East Coast, near the beach. And I just always had an entrepreneurial itch, and that’s what brought me to where I’m at today with Web Street, which I know we’ll get into. Sure. But yeah, I just got out of the corporate America role and started any type of side hustle. I didn’t know what it was going to be. I wanted to not be dependent on the W2 paycheck.

 

[00:02:47.840] – Kyle

And that’s been about three years ago.

 

[00:02:52.010] – Sean

I was going to ask you, how long ago did you dive in? So Web Street, you created three years ago. Yeah.

 

[00:02:57.670] – Kyle

The first vacation rental investing was back in 2018, so more like six years ago, but actually left my job, corporate job, three years ago.

 

[00:03:07.050] – Sean

Three years ago. Good for you. Now, full-time, Web Street is your main business. Is that correct?

 

[00:03:12.490] – Kyle

100 %, yes. The vacation rental stuff is managed almost exclusively passively now by a good cleaning staff and management company. And so Web Street is my full focus.

 

[00:03:24.790] – Sean

Got it. Okay, so let’s dive into the business. What is the business model and how does it make money?

 

[00:03:30.230] – Kyle

Yeah. So we like to… There’s a few different terms we throw around. Micro private equity is one way to think about it, but also just fractional ownership, fractional investing. If you’ve ever heard of there’s Masterworks and Fundrise and Yield Street and these platforms that make it possible to invest in real estate, or art, or wine, or whiskey, or trading cards, or anything, you name it. We do that for online businesses and digital assets, and there was nobody doing it at the time, and that’s why we created it.

 

[00:04:00.160] – Sean

Got it. So it’s like a marketplace. You’re bringing two audiences together. You have your entrepreneurs or those who have a digital asset. They’re listing their entity or their business. And then you, you bring on your investors as the other party. So they’re meeting in the middle on the same platform. Is that a high-level, accurate description?

 

[00:04:22.270] – Kyle

Yeah, high-level, that’s pretty good. There’s just one nuance. So generally, the operators that you mentioned, they’ve bought and sold and built multiple businesses. They have a really strong track record. But when they come to us, we raise the money from investors, and they go out and buy additional businesses and implement their strategies and grow them. So they don’t come to us with a business in hand. Now, they may own some, but we’re not asking investors to invest in a business they already own. They go out and purchase businesses based on the amount of money raised, based on what’s out there in the marketplace, and then investors take part in the upside, the profits.

 

[00:04:57.710] – Sean

Got it. So I’m still trying to walk my my way through the journey of a user. So if I come to you, let’s say I’m an investor, I come to you and say, Hey, Kyle, I want to invest in businesses. Is this a site that just can browse any marketplace that I can look at? Or do I talk to you and you have a portfolio behind the scenes?

 

[00:05:16.320] – Kyle

It’s basically the second. So we have what we call our funds. We’re on our eighth fund, and each fund has different online business operators in them. So the one that is currently, we always have an offering pretty much. But speaking, what is it now? May already. We have a portfolio of three operators. One is in software as a service, one is in direct to consumer, and then one is in the agency side of things, so marketing and digital advertising and stuff like that. So if you wanted to invest in that fund, you would get diversification across all three of those operators.

 

[00:05:52.260] – Sean

Got it. Okay. So you go depending on where you’re at, it sounds like you start a new fund. I’ve to different firms that are like your business model, where they’ll start maybe two, maybe three funds per year. And then within each fund would be a bundle of businesses.

 

[00:06:10.910] – Kyle

You got it. Yeah, that’s it. We’re doing three to four, just depending. Okay. Yeah, three or four per year. Yeah.

 

[00:06:18.480] – Sean

That’s great. And then I assume when you open a fund, it also has a close. Like, Hey, this is your opportunity to invest. We are closing in the next two weeks. And if you don’t get in by that time, then you can invest in the next fund, potentially. Is that how it works?

 

[00:06:34.260] – Kyle

That’s exactly it. You’re explaining. I’m a pitchman. Yeah, no, that’s exactly it. So I like to think of it. It’s easy to put into a quarter. Each of our fund In other words, it’s about 2-3 months. Once we close the fund, those operators go out to marketplaces, different brokerages, there’s private deal flow. They go try to acquire businesses, and there’s another quarter or a three-month acquisition period. So they have 90 days. They go look for businesses, they bring them to us, and we have final say. They do very in-depth due diligence in vetting of the businesses. And if we think it’s a fit for what they said they were going to do, we will use that investor money to purchase those businesses. And generally, we can get them at a very good multiple because we’re coming with cash in hand. And the only other thing I’ll add is that the operators, they actually put in 5 % of the total fund as well. So they have a lot of skin in the game. If it’s a $2 million business they bought or $2 million our fund, they’ve got $100,000 in. So we tried really hard to align incentives.

 

[00:07:35.740] – Sean

Got it. So now, to clarify here, you guys are buying majority stake in the businesses that go within each fund. Is that right?

 

[00:07:43.630] – Kyle

We actually purchased the businesses. We purchase the businesses, we purchase them with the investor and operator money. We purchase them in a limited partnership. So we own them. And I guess I went through acquisition and all that, and then I stopped. But once they acquire the businesses, They implement their strategies, whether it’s marketing or introducing new products or generating new customers or whatever their strategies are. They use those to grow the businesses, and then they eventually sell the businesses. So we say in the two to four year range is what we advertise, obviously, it depends on market conditions and how the businesses are growing, and they’re spitting off cash flow throughout this whole period. But at the end of the fund, all the businesses will have been liquidated or sold.

 

[00:08:26.850] – Sean

Got you. Okay. Let’s take a quick commercial break.

 

[00:08:29.690] – Tykr Commercial Ad

Do you feel like stock investing is too confusing, too time consuming, or too risky? It doesn’t have to be. If you ever considered investing on your own but don’t know where to start, I welcome you to check out Tykr. Tykr guides you through your investment journey by steering you towards safe investments and away from risky investments. I created Tykr because number one, I wanted to remove emotions from investing, and number two, I wanted to save time. If you’re interested, you can get started with a free trial. Simply visit Tykr. Com. It’s T-Y-K-R. Com. Again, tykr. Com.

 

[00:09:04.180] – Sean

All right, back to the show. And why does somebody come to you in the first place? Are they in a position where I’m a little bored of maybe building my business? I want to hand it off, or maybe there’s a partnership issue, and they’re like, We just want to wash our hands of this and go our separate ways.

 

[00:09:22.610] – Kyle

Sure. Yeah, that’s a great question. There’s all kinds of life factors. A lot of times, they built and sold multiple And they know they can… Maybe they’ve built it from scratch, right? And they can have a two or three million dollar exit. I mean, these are big time businesses. I mean, we’ve bought some for as low as 200, 300,000, which is still relatively significant, but up to several million dollars. So maybe they just want that windfall. Unfortunately, there’s other things like you just mentioned. I mean, there’s partnerships gone bad. There’s divorces. There’s just life. So people, they just want to do something different. So all kinds of different Got you.

 

[00:10:01.350] – Sean

Okay. All right. And then talk to us about some of the criteria you’re looking for. I know some of the entrepreneurs in our audience, they may be in that position. They’re building a business. They have momentum. They’ve got an audience. They got an email database, and they’re like, You know what? I maybe want to hand this off to somebody else and work on something. I’ve got a niche to do something else, and they don’t know where to go, but you might be a good opportunity. But what criteria are you essentially looking for?

 

[00:10:28.450] – Kyle

Yeah. So there’s a lot There are different brokerages in places you can sell businesses, and they vary greatly in what their criteria are. Some are… You can list anything you want, Wild West. And then there’s some, like our sister company, Empire Flippers, who do extremely It’s a very strict criteria. So 95 % of the businesses that come to Empire Flippers don’t get listed on the site just because they want to list the best of the best. So some of those criteria would be, first of all, they need to be a digital business. They can have a physical aspect per se, warehousing or something like that for the products, but they need to be a digital business. Generally, we want businesses that are growing. Basically, we don’t want businesses that are in decline. Not that there aren’t good businesses in decline, that somebody couldn’t turn around. It’s just not because we have investors, our number one criteria is investor returns. So we want businesses that are growing and not declining. Other than that, it really depends on what the operators, what their strategy is. Some of them, if it’s an Amazon FBA business where they’re listing a bunch of products.

 

[00:11:32.700] – Kyle

They may have a bunch of different skews, but only one of those SKUs is making the money. That’s pretty risky, right? Same thing as software of a service. If you’ve got a bunch of recurring revenue, but all of your revenue is coming from one or two big customers, it’s risky. But that means also there’s opportunity. So a bit of a long-winded answer there, but we look at all kinds of different criteria and we look out for red flags. Do you have enough suppliers? How does your supply chain look? All that type of stuff. So does Does that make sense?

 

[00:12:00.620] – Sean

It does. Yeah. What I’m thinking about is on the SaaS side is MRR, like you said, and this is more of a B2B play, and this is good for the audience. Tykr, in our case, we’re more B2C, so we’ve got a lot of customers So we’re not going to have a situation where B2B, you could have the majority in two accounts. But on B2B, let’s say you’ve got 15 customers, but two of them have 80 % of the revenue, then it’s like, oh, or the relationships with those two, they better pretty good.

 

[00:12:30.720] – Kyle

Yeah, exactly. You hit the nail on the head there. And then does the buyer or the seller want to disclose? Sometimes they don’t… Until you get far enough in the due diligence process, maybe they don’t want to let you know exactly who those customers are or whatever the case may be.

 

[00:12:45.790] – Sean

So then you mentioned you also do FBA, so right away, I think of e-commerce. You’re dealing with businesses that have a physical product. So you’re probably asking questions like, where’s your product engineered? What does that supply chain process look like? To get products from there overseas, let’s say it’s manufactured to the customer’s door? What does that time look like? I’d be asking those questions.

 

[00:13:08.960] – Kyle

Are you shipping by sea or are you shipping by air? Are you doing both? What are your backups? I mean, there’s so much that goes into it. But you’re exactly right.

 

[00:13:16.510] – Sean

And then what is your vetting time period look like? Are we talking like a one month, three-month process here to really vet your prospects?

 

[00:13:24.720] – Kyle

Yeah. It’s probably right in there between. It’s generally around the two month range. And it can vary by each operator. It has to be a fit for them as well. They come to us for different reasons. Some of them, they’ve built a bunch of businesses, but they want to take it to the next level. They’ve sold a couple of $300,000 businesses, but they want to go out and buy a larger business and implement their strategy. It’s really a courting process. So we vet them extremely in-depth, but they need to vet us and be comfortable with us as well. What we bring to the table as Web Street as a company for them is we like to say a fund in a box. So we take care of investor relations. We take care of all the legal, all the taxes, all of that stuff, distributing the profits to the investors. So they can just worry about growing the businesses. That’s it. They don’t have to mess with the LLLCs and the K-1s and all of that stuff that comes along with the investors. So that’s really attractive for a lot of operators.

 

[00:14:26.000] – Sean

Got it. And just to clarify, and this is good for the audience to know is, prospects going to come to you, they’re still going to operate the business. They’re not selling it and handing it off completely. They are still operating, correct?

 

[00:14:38.580] – Kyle

Generally, yes. That’s correct.

 

[00:14:40.590] – Sean

Yeah. There are other entities, of course, they’ll buy it. And I’ve been approached by those types that are like, hey, we want to buy you all right, and we want to operate it. You just walk away with a check and you can do whatever you want. And I’m like, well, I like building my business. I don’t want to let it go.

 

[00:14:55.590] – Kyle

Yeah. I mean, that’s a very good point. A lot of times, I mean, it’s your baby, You’ve spent a lot of blood, sweat, and tears building. So anybody that’s built a business knows how much hard work goes into it. And even if you were going to completely walk away from it, you want it to go to somebody who’s going to continue to let it succeed, right?

 

[00:15:14.360] – Sean

Another question here would be, do you have a minimum monthly reoccurring revenue, if it’s a SaaS or just monthly revenue you look for if it’s e-commerce?

 

[00:15:24.560] – Kyle

Yeah. So this gets a little bit out of my expertise as far as the company. I’m the operations manager. The other side of the business is acquisitions, which is a really big part of the business. But I can speak in general terms. When the portfolio managers or operators, we use those terms in that can interchangeably come to us. They generally lay out their criteria to begin with. So it varies is the answer, but we always disclose that to our investors. So when you go to our site or our platform and you are deciding if you want to invest in this fund or if you want to wait for one later in the year, you can see all of those criteria. You can see their track record, what they’ve done in the past, what they plan to do to grow the businesses, what MRR they’re looking for. And it varies. We have two different SaaS operators in our previous fund. One was very much B2B infrastructure. He actually was coding himself and all that stuff in his team. And then we had one that was B2C, completely opposite side. So the answer is it varies. And that’s a long-winded way of telling you that.

 

[00:16:29.360] – Sean

To zoom out a little bit, and this refers back to a percentage you said, so you buy it outright, but the operator can then invest 5 %. Let’s say they can buy 5 %. So this means is the operator and you and the vestners coming to table, there’s a bigger end game here, right? Okay, now that we had this transaction completed as a partner, per se, in this process, We’re looking at maybe a bigger event, liquidity event, over the next three… Are you looking at, and this is my question, probably about three to five years down the line, maybe getting bought by a much bigger entity or maybe going public?

 

[00:17:14.670] – Kyle

Yeah, so that’s something we’ve played with a good bit. The liquidity event, we generally say, is in the two to four year range. But are you familiar with aggregators at all? There was several during the COVID period where they would buy up all kinds of different Amazon FBA businesses and aggregate as a brand. So that’s something that’s on the table for us, but it’s not anything we’ve done to date.

 

[00:17:36.700] – Sean

Got it. Okay.

 

[00:17:38.190] – Kyle

But it’s definitely something we have our eye on. We’re only about, like I said, we just started three years ago, and we’ve got about 40 million in assets under management now. So we’re growing, and that’s definitely on the table, but it’s not something that is necessarily promised at this time. Going public is also an option. We’ll just have to see. And one thing I did want to hit on, you were talking about the bigger liquidity event toward the end, the sale of the businesses and whatnot. One of the criteria or one of the things that’s really nice about these businesses is they’re cash flow positive, right? You’re not investing in a piece of art or something. Not that those can’t be good investments, but you’re waiting on that to appreciate. It’s not spitting off cash. These businesses are. So every quarter, we distribute two-thirds of the profits to investors. And then same thing on the exit, two-thirds of the profits at the exit goes back to investors. Brilliant.

 

[00:18:29.120] – Sean

That was actually my next question is, how are the investors getting paid? There are investment vehicles out there. As you know, you invest, and then you’re only getting paid if it’s sold or if it goes public. And that is a big if. So it could be 10 years, and it’s like, I don’t see any money. Well, you don’t love that investment, but it could pay off big someday. But in your case, every quarter, you’re getting paid something. So that tells me up front, and this is good for the audience to know, is you guys are really looking into businesses that are pretty Are we down close to profitable or already profitable. So the probability of getting paid every quarter is much higher.

 

[00:19:06.530] – Kyle

Exactly. Yeah. I don’t know if I could have said it better myself. I mean, it’s a cash flow positive play. Sure, the businesses should grow and should appreciate It would be worth more when we sell them. But it’s not purely an appreciation play. It’s very much a cash flow play. So for somebody that’s looking to get away from normal stocks and they’re heavily invested in real estate and different stuff. It’s a type of diversification, and that’s the way we push it. We don’t want it to be somebody’s entire portfolio or anything like that, but it’s always nice to have a cash flow of play that’s spitting off cash every three months.

 

[00:19:42.170] – Sean

Yeah, I like that. My audience knows, especially a Tykr. It’s like when you… We always talk about the comparison between stocks and real estate. With stocks, you keep letting those businesses build, but you’re not collecting reoccurring cash flow. You let compound interest really build up that portfolio, and then you You start paying yourself at a later date. Real estate, you’re paying yourself with appreciation of a home, does not appreciate as fast as a business. Well, this is a fun play where you can be in a business that appreciates, but you’re also getting paid every quarter. It’s brilliant.

 

[00:20:16.930] – Kyle

Yeah, we like to take so. We worked hard to line up the incentives. And honestly, we’re trying to build a platform that we would want to invest in. We’re all investors, entrepreneurs. We haven’t talked about our team much, but we’re We’re remote all over the world. We have team members in America, Mexico, Colombia, Portugal, Thailand, Egypt, and just a really good culture of entrepreneurs and investors. And that’s at the forefront of our minds as we’re building this company.

 

[00:20:44.400] – Sean

Yeah. It sounds like you guys are a remote, fully remote company.

 

[00:20:48.740] – Kyle

Fully remote? Yeah. Nothing to do with COVID. We just always have been. That’s one of the nice things about digital businesses is it allows that. We do get together once or twice a year, somewhere fun in the world. And we work, we call them retreats or meetups, and we have a lot of fun together, but we work hard on projects and strategies and things that you don’t want to do over Zoom. Sure. Yeah. But other than that, we’re spread all over completely remote.

 

[00:21:12.790] – Sean

So what’s the big thing you’re working on right now to build this business?

 

[00:21:16.880] – Kyle

Yeah. So I’d say two big things. The biggest is by far our engineering platform. I mean, our website. We have what you call Web Street Wallet. You go in, you’re wiring funds. It’s got to hit your account, that you got to sign your documents. And then every quarter, when we do distributions, we might have 60, 80, 100 investors in a fund that all has to get distributed to their account. So we have a whole engineering team that is really my baby. And then I enjoy And that’s where my background’s at. And then the other big thing is talking to people like you. A lot of people don’t know that much about online businesses or that there’s a way to invest in them. And we’re trying to make it more well known, make it a a new asset class. And so there’s a lot of growing the audience right now in the market side of things.

 

[00:22:08.040] – Sean

And then to invest, do you have any limitations? You have to be accredited or is it pretty much wide open?

 

[00:22:13.460] – Kyle

We do. Most of Our funds are accredited investors only, and we have toy with doing some crowdfunding through WeFunder and things like that. But generally speaking, we’re dealing with accredited investors, which I’m sure your audience mostly knows over 200,000 per year, over a million in networth, and there’s other ways as well. But yeah.

 

[00:22:34.730] – Sean

Good to know. All right. And then before we jump to the rapid fire round, is there one more key takeaway you can give our audience?

 

[00:22:41.260] – Kyle

I think we’ve been doing a lot of talking about the business, and I’m sure it just generated a lot more questions. I think my key takeaway would be, if you’re interested in online businesses or investing, whatever it is, get very educated first. You really want to understand the model of what you’re investing in. It makes it more fun when it’s doing well, and it makes it a bit less frustrating if your investments aren’t doing well. You really need to get educated before you just put money into anything. So that’d be my key takeaway, and we always push that to anybody that’s interested. Yeah.

 

[00:23:15.680] – Sean

And I tell my audience this, and this is one of those shows where I’ll break the forth wall a little bit and talk to the audiences. This is what I would do if I were in your position is, let’s see, you approached Kyle. He had a fund available right now. I would ask what companies are within. I’d want to see each company? I want to know their business model. How do they make money? And if you could go that far, you can answer this question, Kyle, could I see the income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet, or at least the profit and loss statement of each of those businesses before I invest?

 

[00:23:46.240] – Kyle

Yeah, sure. So I should have hit on that. So yes, you get to see all of that. And in addition to the cash flow you get each quarter, you actually get quarterly reports that explain what’s going well with the businesses, what’s going well with the sites, what’s not going well, what your plans are for the next quarter. And so it’s a completely passive investment. You don’t have to open those reports at all if you’re not interested, but most of our investors are, and they find it interesting, fun to know what’s going on behind the scenes. And And in addition to the reports, the PnLs each quarter and cash flow statements and all that. So you can dive as deep as you want or be as passive or removed as you want.

 

[00:24:24.150] – Sean

I love it. This is an idea I was thrown around to execute cute on my own. Obviously, I can’t do that right now because Tykr is my baby. But you’ve got a really fun business model. I tip my hat to you, sir. You got something fun I’d like to do someday.

 

[00:24:43.010] – Kyle

I appreciate it. Yeah, we’re enjoying it. We’re enjoying building it. And yeah, wouldn’t look back three years in the run and hopefully many more fun years ahead.

 

[00:24:52.260] – Sean

That’s fun. All right, let’s transition to the rapid fire round. This is the part of the episode where we get to find out who Kyle really is. If you can try to answer each question in about 15 seconds or less. You ready?

 

[00:25:05.030] – Kyle

Let’s do it.

 

[00:25:05.870] – Sean

All right. What is your favorite podcast?

 

[00:25:08.050] – Kyle

Lex Friedmann.

 

[00:25:11.210] – Sean

Yeah, good one.

 

[00:25:12.810] – Kyle

I like Lex. Yeah, he’s great. He just had one today where he came back from three weeks in the Amazon. Fascinating. About four hours I was listening to earlier.

 

[00:25:21.540] – Sean

Four hours.

 

[00:25:22.720] – Kyle

Okay. That guy will interview anybody, won’t he?

 

[00:25:25.450] – Sean

He will. And listening is a skill, I more people need to do a better job at, and he listens. Lex Friedmann, to the listeners out there, if you haven’t checked him out, he’s a good listener. He asks good questions, and he listens intently. I love that.

 

[00:25:42.070] – Kyle

Excellent point. Yeah. Yeah.

 

[00:25:44.330] – Sean

All right. What is a recent book you read and would recommend?

 

[00:25:47.560] – Kyle

That’s funny. I didn’t mean to tie these two together. You just mentioned the questions and listening. There’s one called Change your questions, change your life. And it’s pretty short, easy read, but I need to reread it, to be honest. It’s Excellent. It gets into why listening is so important and how you can frame questions differently. There’s all types of different questions, leading questions and questions that you actually care about the answer, and you’re going to listen to it instead of just waiting to respond. And it That’s a great book. So change your questions, change your life.

 

[00:26:17.310] – Sean

Love it.

 

[00:26:18.240] – Kyle

Yeah, good one.

 

[00:26:19.900] – Sean

This is a fun one. What is your favorite movie?

 

[00:26:22.070] – Kyle

This is great. So I have a small man cave here, and I have six movie posters in there. And I put Abundance thought into it. I did three shows and three movies. And probably the movie I’d pick out of those three would be Training Day with Denzel Washington.

 

[00:26:37.910] – Sean

Yes. All right. So that was my favorite movie for years. I remember mentioning that movie in the early 2000s. People would ask, it’d be like Training Day. People would be like, What? I’m like, You’ve never seen Training Day?

 

[00:26:51.190] – Kyle

Yeah, I guess I need to rewatch it as well. That’s one of my favorites.

 

[00:26:54.470] – Sean

Denzel?

 

[00:26:55.860] – Kyle

Yeah.

 

[00:26:56.470] – Sean

Crushed it. Okay. I don’t want to move on to the next question because I’m a total nerd. The six posters that are hanging, what are they?

 

[00:27:04.100] – Kyle

Sure. So Entourage, the HBO show, the original Star Wars poster, really cool poster. That was a big part of my childhood, so that one’s nostalgic. The Game of Thrones, and the Dark Knight, the Joker poster where he’s got the smile. I almost said that instead of Training Day, I love Dark Knight as well. So I think I hit all six.

 

[00:27:27.420] – Sean

Yeah, I’ve got the same thing, Dark Knight poster with the clown.

 

[00:27:33.420] – Kyle

Yes.

 

[00:27:34.400] – Sean

Yeah. In my man cave or lower level. Nice call, man. That’s awesome. Thank you. All right. Next question here. What is the worst advice you ever received?

 

[00:27:47.110] – Kyle

Yeah, this is a good one. It’s a lot of bad advice out there, isn’t there? I would say the worst advice I received was just basically… I don’t know if it’s advice as much as… I guess it was. Trying to think of how to phrase it was basically in high school, it came with… My high school was pretty easy, much easier than it should have been. Even though I was doing well in school, It was just there was no reason to go above and beyond and study harder than you needed to. And I think that was terrible advice because when I got to college, I had no idea how to study for engineering school. And it took me a couple of years to even learn how to study. So I don’t know. It was a long-winded way around that, but that would be it.

 

[00:28:35.770] – Sean

To hammer on that, it was phrased to me, learn…

 

[00:28:41.350] – Kyle

You- Learn how to learn.

 

[00:28:43.330] – Sean

Learn how to learn, yes. And I was horrible at that in high school, nor did I really care about high school. It’s like I just… Exactly. Sports and hanging out with friends.

 

[00:28:52.320] – Kyle

Exactly. That’s exactly it. Yeah, that was it.

 

[00:28:56.050] – Sean

In college, one of my friends is a PhD. He’s a professor, and he’s like, You’re Your learning doesn’t end after college. It starts after college. The purpose of college is you figure out how you learn best, whether it’s note cards or… I’m not a person that… We’re making this longer than it needs to be, but hopefully, the audience finds fun in this. Is I hate sitting down, staring forward and watching people talk at me. That’s not how I learn. I learn by reading on my own and writing down. I figured out that’s how I learn, so I hated classes my entire life. That’s not how I learn. I had to give me the book, give me the material. I’ll take it on my own, at my own pace. And if it’s not writing down, then I use Excel. You’re an engineer, you probably get this. You put things in the cells and how things Anyway.

 

[00:29:45.960] – Kyle

No, it’s 100 % it. You learn to learn, and everybody learns differently. And I think that’s what engineering school taught me more than anything. It’s not like I’m using all the technical skills now, but I learned how to problem-solve and work through roadblocks and that type of thing. So super important.

 

[00:30:00.080] – Sean

A hundred %. All right, flip that equation. What’s the best advice you ever received?

 

[00:30:04.670] – Kyle

Bet on yourself. And that’s what I like to think that I’ve been doing currently with the company we’re building. I got this advice, actually from one of my managers at my previous role shortly. Basically, before I left. We had a large consulting firm come in, and I was in relatively mid-upper management, and just had to let a bunch of people go that didn’t deserve it because of headcount. And just I just got tired of feeling like a puppet and speaking with my manager and going to him and say, What’s the point in putting me in this role if I’m not going to be able to make my decisions? If I fail, I fail, but at least it’ll be because of the decisions I made. So, yeah, he basically told me, Eventually, you’re going to have to bet on yourself if you’re not happy with what you’re doing. And I think about that a lot.

 

[00:30:51.220] – Sean

Yeah, great advice. And agree. All right. And last question here is the time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

 

[00:31:01.640] – Kyle

Well, the one choice goes back to what we rambling about for a few minutes ago. I think I would go back to about age five or six, where we really started having early memories. And I would tell myself to enjoy as much time outside with friends, being active as possible. I think my parents did a pretty good job of keeping me outside and active, and I enjoy fitness and hiking and all that stuff, but I wish I had done more. And I know today kids definitely have way more distractions than we ever did. And so I would give myself that advice, and I would give that to anybody else that would listen to it at that age.

 

[00:31:41.690] – Sean

Sounds like you were, like me, probably an ’80s, ’90s these kids. So it was riding bikes and building forts and doing all the outdoor stuff. Oh, yeah.

 

[00:31:51.410] – Kyle

That’s exactly right.

 

[00:31:52.720] – Sean

All right. Where can the audience reach you?

 

[00:31:54.880] – Kyle

Yeah. So webstreet. Co. It’s not. Com. We’re on there. It’s kyle@webstreet. Co is my email. I’ll just give it out. I’m always active there. And then if my name is in the notes here, just because it’s a long last name, Kyle Kudareski, I’m very active on LinkedIn. So I’ll definitely repost this there, and you can find me there. Any of those three ways is perfect.

 

[00:32:15.810] – Sean

Perfect. Well, Kyle, really appreciate your time. This was great. Thank you.

 

[00:32:20.020] – Kyle

Thanks, Sean. I enjoyed it. See you.

 

[00:32:22.330] – Sean

Hey, I’d like to say thanks for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. And if you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a five-star review? The more reviews we get, the higher this podcast will rank. All right, stay tuned for the next episode. We’ll see you.