Mike is joined on the Investment For Freedom podcast by Kyle Depiesse. Kyle is an expert in managing debt and tells us all how he managed to cut nearly $400k in debt in just 36 months. He also tells us all about a golf event he’s hosting in the famous Pinehurst course to help men stretch themselves socially.
“…As men, we just got to drop our ego more often and get about the business of just authentically connecting with other guys.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro
1:20 – Kyle’s father and his high school teacher Mr. Sampson had the biggest impact on his life
2:26 – Lois, Kyle’s wife, has allowed him the time and space he needs to figure out what he wants to do in his life
3:27 – Kyle begins to describe his greatest setback and what he learnt from it
5:09 – The advice Kyle gives out the most is you don’t have to sacrifice your personal balance sheet for your professional balance sheet
7:15 – Kyle tells us about his upcoming golf event and how it helps the men who show up
10:52 – We need to get ourselves into situations where were stretched
13:52 – Kyle gives his background and how he got to where he is today
16:45 – Kyle managed to pay off $400,000 in debt in 36 months
18:23 – Mike’s risk meter is high compared to Kyle’s risk meter which is very low
21:06 – Kyle is selling his house but is contemplating sitting on the money
22:17 – The percentage of people who time it right vs. the percentage of people who get wiped out is 10-90
22:51 – Kyle’s ideology is a slow methodical process
23:42 – Kyle learnt about personal finance through listening to podcasts while driving
25:21 – Mike borrowed money from his boss a couple times, his boss told him he needs to figure it out
27:10 – What does the process of helping people pay off their debt look like
29:01 – Mike wouldn’t advise people to be investing right now
30:17 – If you can’t handle $100,000 a year, what makes you think you can handle $1,000,000 a year?
31:21 – In order to progress you’ve got to become a different person
33:08 – What should someone do who wants to get out of W2
37:54 – The magic happens after you commit
40:14 – Enjoy the process, you’ll get to wherever you’re going
REFERENCES:
Kyle is the Creator and Founder of the Reaching Beyond Experience rooted in assisting others in achieving their highest level of fulfillment in how they connect with others, connect with themselves and build their careers. After 15 years in corporate america, hitting rock bottom and completely burned out, Kyle left everything to start designing a life around fulfillment. Since 2015 he has spent a season as a stay at home dad, finished an Ironman competition, started his own business, started a podcast and along with his wife, paid off almost $400k to become completely debt free! Now he leverages his story to design destination experiences and coaching offerings to help his clients get the clarity they need to build their definition of a fulfilling life.
Follow Kyle Depiesse to learn more:
Upcoming Fall men’s experience: https://kyledepiesse.com/
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Mike Ayala: Thank you for joining me on the investing for freedom podcast today. I’ve got a special guest, actually a more recent friend, somebody that I’ve had the privilege of getting to know recently, and I’m actually heading to a pretty amazing event that he puts on here coming up in the next couple months. So I’m very, very excited to bring Kyle Depiesse. Did I get it?
Kyle Depiesse: Yes. You killed it man. Good to be here Mike. I’m excited for this. This is cool. And you starts off well, when someone says my last name correctly, so I’m excited.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. And just full disclosure. I had to like run through that a couple of times to make sure that I got it.
Kyle Depiesse: I can see it in your heads just rolling through it. Like how do I get this right? How do I get don’t screw it up. Don’t screw it up.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. And funny enough, my last name, everybody slaughters, Ayala, but for whatever reason, it’s a ayaya. So Kyle and I were just in an event and we had dinner together a couple of times and we played a new form of credit card roulette where, cause the whole table was like crazy last names. And so whatever name, the waitress got right, they had to pay. Yeah, that was fun.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah, I like that game.
Mike Ayala: Kyle. I appreciate you taking the time to be on with us. I think my guests are going to get a lot out of you and just your experience and everything you bring to life. So appreciate it.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Mike, I’m excited for this.
Mike Ayala: So let’s get into the four questions. So who’s had the greatest impact on your life?
Kyle Depiesse: That’s funny because I asked this question on my podcast too, and I love this question and I have to give two answers. First would be, both my parents have been incredibly influential and impactful in my life, but it’s specifically my father, just the father son thing. And then I had a tremendous teacher in high school. His name is Mr. Samson, who, I went to a small school. So he was my track coach, my Spanish teacher, my musical coach, student council. Like he did everything because you have to be. And I was in a small school, so I had to do everything too, but he was everything to all kids. So he wasn’t just a teacher. But he was a mentor and now he’s actually become a pretty good friend. So those are the two people that I would say.
Mike Ayala: That is amazing when you take a relationship some from so far back and they stay in your life. One of my first bosses in the restaurant industry, he’s that still for me, It’s kind of crazy.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. That’s cool to see that.
Mike Ayala: If you could narrow it down to one thing that has had the greatest impact on your success, what would you say that is?
Kyle Depiesse: I have to think about it, but I don’t. Because my wife, Lois, who there aren’t too many women under the age of 70 with the name Lois, but she is under the age of 70. She has been the, she has been that person for me. We balance each other out and I think maybe many people are, if you’re listening and they’re married, opposites attract. And my wife and I are very opposite in a lot of things and we’ve helped balance each other out and she’s allowed me the space, the time and everything to really figure out what I want to do with my life. And I’ve got that figured out now at 40 years old, but she allowed me that space to do it. And she’s been incredibly important on that success path.
Mike Ayala: That’s awesome. I’m fortunate to have that in my life as well.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Ayala: That’s that saying behind every great man is a great woman, right?
Kyle Depiesse: Absolutely. Yep.
Mike Ayala: What was your greatest setback and what’d you learn from it?
Kyle Depiesse: My greatest setback when I was at, so a lot of my career is corporate. So when I was in corporate world, I was, it was a target headquarters and I applied for a job that I really, really wanted. It was like I had corporate trainer and I never forget this. And this was like, this was probably 2012 maybe, it’s a long time ago. And the divisional of that area, it was my final interview. And he was giving me feedback on why I didn’t get the job. And he told me that I didn’t have the personality to be a trainer, to be a trainer at Target. And man at that age, in my young thirties, like I was gutted, that really was tough to hear. I was like, wait a minute. I thought that this was my gifting. I thought that this was what I was supposed to do. And here I am, I’m just being, I’m being told by a guy like basically I don’t have the personality. It’s not within me to do it. And so that was, that was really tough. But I learned from that. I was in a tailspin for a little bit, but I learned from that, like, you can’t allow someone else to have that power over you and speak that into your life because I could easily then have gone forth and said, do you know what? I just don’t have that personality. I’m not going to become a teacher. It’s not within me. And so I’ve kind of taken that back and said, you know what? That was just his perspective on it. And it’s not the reality. And here I am, I’m teaching now in a really unique way and I’m successful at it. So I learned that, some people are going to have opinions and perspectives on you and that you can’t allow that to become your reality.
Mike Ayala: That’s so good. What is the piece of advice you find sharing with people the most, find yourself sharing with people the most?
Kyle Depiesse: I love this question. And you know what I learned through my professional journey, professional and personal journey, right? Cause it all weaves together is that because I got really caught up in chasing the success ladder and climbing the corporate ladder and doing it at all costs. And so the advice that I share is you don’t have to sacrifice your personal balance sheet for your professional balance sheet because there’s no success at work that covers up for failing at home. And I’m married. I have a three-and-a-half-year-old, Mike, you you’re married, you have kids. And it’s really important for me to be involved in the life of my son. And it’s a big part of my story. I get to stay home with him for a season and I love it, man. And I absolutely love it. And so, we here in the world in our culture that is hustle, grind, 80 hours a week and do all this and you get burned out. You get out of shape, the relationships in your life, suffer and for what? like you get to be successful, whatever that means. But what if you, you’re on your seventh marriage and your relationship with your kids is awful and you got a lot, but you got a lot of money. It doesn’t mean anything. So to me, that’s kind of what I end up sharing a lot now.
Mike Ayala: I love that. And I’ve often correlated not to go religious or spiritual on people, but there’s a scripture in the Bible that says, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but to lose his soul. And I’ve always, obviously that’s from an eternity conversation standpoint, but I’ve always brought that back into business and everything that I do in life, like what does it profit me to have a billion dollars or a hundred million dollars or a jet or a plane or anything else, and to lose my family, to lose my health, the legacy conversation. So I really appreciate that. That’s such good wisdom.
Kyle Depiesse: Cool. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I learned it somewhat the hard way.
Mike Ayala: So tell me a little bit, I normally probably wouldn’t start here, but I’m so excited about this upcoming golf experience. Let’s talk about the event that’s coming up. I mean, usually that’d be like the thing at the end, but what got you into this, tell us about the event and how’d you get here?
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Well, and it’s a bit, we got to backtrack a little bit. So I’ll start where we are now. So it creates a bucket list experiences for high performing high achieving successful men. And the reason is, is because I helped teach them work life rhythm. I don’t really believe in balance, I believe in rhythm, which would be okay, work hard for a period of time, but then you’ve got to take a time out and recharge your battery. And most guys are really good at the forefront of that conversation, crushing it, putting their head down. And then we suck at recharging and being around likeminded individuals and connecting and just having fun. So I basically built that because that’s what I was longing for in my career as well. So when I burnt out, 2014, 2015, that’s what I would have needed. So I just basically reverse engineered that and said, okay, well, how do I just create this for guys so that they don’t struggle with it as well. Because I’m interested in men becoming better fathers, better husbands on top of being better leaders and entrepreneurs and successful businessmen. But sometimes we just need someone to help us in that regard. So that’s kind of where it came from. So last year I just had this idea and I just started marketing around, Hey, I’m going to create a two night experience on the North shore of Minnesota. And I want to see who shows up. Here’s what I’m going to teach. I am going to teach what I’ve learned through struggling a bit and just being really authentic in that. And at that time I didn’t market that to just men. But it ended up being 10 guys showed up. I was like, well, clearly men need to have a container like this. And then I did another one. This winter, we were dog sledding in Northern Minnesota by the boundary waters of Canada. And again, smashing success, a ton of fun. And then I said, all right, I’m going to do another one, but I’m going to do it around golf because the average round of golf is four to four and a half hours. And so if I can do a good job of getting the right guys in the right groups, like they know what to talk about, eventually you got to stop talking about the weather and you just start talking about things that are important in your life. And so I keep the group small. We are golfing in October at Pinehurst in North Carolina. And then I set up a really fun half day NASCAR pit crew experience where guys can try something where they, maybe didn’t even think they could ever do this. And I just do it for them and set it up. They just show up, have fun, connect me to amazing people, have a great time, get recharged and then go back and crush life and work. And so that’s kind of, that’s kind of the gist of it.
Mike Ayala: Obviously. We’ll get into a bunch of other stuff you do, but what I love about what you have going, and I’m just going to be a little transparent about where I’m at. For our listeners that are saying, we create all these limiting beliefs in our mind about why that’s not for me and I could never do that. And I have two concerns, when I first heard this. And I didn’t even know you when I got invited to this. So a mutual mentor of ours reaches out and he’s like, Hey, I’m doing this guy’s event with a badass guy, his name’s Kyle, you should come. It’s like a guy’s trip. And I’m like, I’m in. So that’s the say yes and figure it out later conversation. I was literally sitting with my wife and I’m like, hey, look, Chris invited me to this. And she’s like, where are you going to go? I’m like, yeah, I already said yes. And she’s like, how much is it? And I said, I have no idea. So I don’t have a limiting belief about, the cost or any of that, but there’s always all these reasons why we can’t get out of our comfort zone and what I love about I haven’t gone to one of your events, but what I love about what I know is going to happen there is I’m going to get stretched. So number one, some people might say, well, there’s a limiting belief about money, which it’s not that expensive, but that’s the first thing. Well, I don’t know if I can afford it. I don’t know if I can take the time off. Neither one of those are my problem, but then I’m sitting here. Well, I’m a horrible golfer. I’m like, obviously this is like one of the best golf courses in the world and it’s a bunch of golfers and I don’t care. I want to get around guys that are going to stretch me. So that was my first limiting belief. And then when we start talking about the NASCAR thing, I don’t know why, but I get nervous when I think about, when I watch how fast they’re pulling those lug nuts. And like, my incompetence, like my fear, all my insecurity start coming out about how fast I’m going to be able to pull lug nuts off of a car and we need to get in zones and environments that stretch us. And so I really appreciate that you’re putting these on. So I, anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there. Do you intentionally design it that way to stretch us? Or is it more just like a…
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Everything you’ll find out is intentional and it might seem like its random or coincidence, but I don’t know a lot of people that Excel at pitting a race car. You know what I mean? So that’s a level playing field, but you’re going to come into it and you’re going to say, well, am I going to look like an idiot? Am I going to look like a fool? And you’re going to have to sit in that or anyone who goes, has to sit in that, and then you’re going to find out, well, no one knows how to do this. And where else might that be showing up in your life? What will be the conversations that were going to happen? Like where else are holding yourself back for fear of what others are going to say? And the golf conversation is another one. A lot of guys that are going are not good golfers, but again, you’re going to have to sit in there like, what if I duff one off the tee and everyone’s watching, and then I get laughed at, who cares? But those are the conversations that you’re going to have in your head, and then we’ll have together as groups. So it is very intentional. There will be some good golfers there, and there will be some guys that haven’t picked up a golf club in years, and it’s all good. You know what I mean? Like as men, we just got to drop our ego more often and get about the business of just authentically connecting with other guys.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. And I love that you’re putting the experiences together and I love how you said work work-life rhythm. I just appreciate everything that you’re doing, to just really stretch guys in general. But yeah, I think it’s exciting. And I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt that said, do something every day that scares you. And we’ve got these quotes, like, everybody’s heard that quote, but the reality is, when we start getting anxiety around something, we need to go out there and stretch ourselves. So I appreciate that you’re forcing people to have higher conversations and pull to a higher level.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah, and I hold you accountable to having fun in your life. Isn’t that crazy? Like someone needs to do that, but Hey, I’ll be the guy.
Mike Ayala: Totally. I love it. So work us backwards. How how’d you get into this? I heard the target story a little bit. What’s your background? How do we get to where we’re at today?
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah, so background, I’m from Wisconsin. I am a Wisconsin guy, and I worked for a travel wholesaler right out of college, moved to Minneapolis, then for Target HQ. And then I really got in my psyche and my brain, I got this, like every two, three years I should be climbing the corporate ladder with a new title, with more pay with all this stuff. And, that eventually catches up with me. I worked for a Carlson resort hotel group for a while, and I worked on their owned portfolio of Radisson hotels. And then I moved over to video game distribution, again, nothing to do with any of my previous path, but I just felt like I should be working my way up. I should be get promoted. And so yeah, all that caught up with me in 2014, 2015, I got just completely burned out. And I just started asking the question, okay, what am I good at? What have I learned? How can I utilize my story to make an impact on other people? And that’s really where a lot of this started to come up, it’s like, I enjoy connecting with guys. I’m a teacher. I became a high school business teacher for two years before I stayed home with our son. But I don’t like to classroom teach. I like to teach by throwing people into situations that makes them learn by doing and feel a bit squirmish, which makes sense after you just heard this story about the experiences, that’s what I really, really enjoy. And so that’s how I started to create that. But all along in the background here is the story of a debt in our life and the story of paying off a ton of debt in a short period of time. Do you want me to go into that? You want me to share that? So I did this little experiment. I don’t know where I heard this, but you can log on to the social security website, which is just ssa.gov. And, at that time I’m incredibly financially illiterates, no intelligence around personal finances. And so I was logging on ssa.gov to figure out, well, what would I make in retirement from the government, from social security? However, when you log onto that website, you drop in your social security, it creates the profile for you to try to project your social security income. But it does that based on how much money you have accumulated and paid into the plan over the years. So when I did that years back, my accumulated earnings was well over a million dollars. And I was kind of like, well, how could that possibly be? I’ve got nothing to show for it. So I was married at the time. And so I said, Louis, what’s your social security number? I want to check out yours, same thing with her, well, over million dollars. So combined, we’re looking at almost $3 million and I’m looking around and I’m like, well, where did it go? Because we’ve got a ton of debt. And in fact, our net worth was extremely negative. And so we just got about the business is paying off all of our debt, consumer debt. So you might call good debt, bad debt. We paid off everything. We didn’t have a ton of consumer debt, but we just paid off our mortgage too. Because we’re like, we’re done with debt right now. So we paid off about $400,000 in 38 months to be 100% debt-free.
Mike Ayala: Wow, that’s impressive. Just real quick on that. Cause a lot of times, and you and I have had this conversation, but a lot of times we’re talking about, the good debt and being able to leverage properties and the value of depreciation and all that stuff. But I think we’ve a lot of times from a real estate world standpoint, or even borrowing money for business, we do people an injustice because not everybody, there’s different personality types, right? There’s different personality profiles, and I’m naturally a high risk person. And so I look at the world through my lens, but the more I get into conversations with guys like you, it’s not right or wrong, it’s just different. And learning to apply debt in a smart methodology is very important. And so sometimes I come out the gate talking about leverage, leverage, leverage debt, debt, debt. And I realized after talking to you that possibly, well, not even possibly, we do people an injustice sometimes talking about going into debt because not everybody can handle it or has the understanding of what good debt versus bad debt is. And even taking it a step further, not everybody, even if they understand what good debt is, wants to be in debt. So we’re all different. And I appreciate the perspective you bring. So you guys paid off 400 grand of debt.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. And like you had said, it’s fun that we’re hanging out and we’re getting know each other. Because we’re pretty, like, I think your risk meter is broken and I’m on the other side, like I have, the risk meter isn’t even moving at all. I’m really conservative. However, I’m humble enough to say, I want to have a conversation with you about that because I want to learn from you and you’re doing the same thing. And I think that’s cool where we can both come together with completely different perspectives. And we can appreciate the style from each other because what ends up happening is, in friend groups and things like peer groups, like will attract like, and I’ll just start hanging out with a bunch of people that don’t want to have any risk or debt in their life. And you might be the exact opposite. So it’s really good for us to jam it and hang out. But I would say that through that process, I got really averse to debt. Like I got to the point where I’m like, I can’t handle a single dollar. I don’t want to owe anyone anything. And then I come out of it and I’m like, man, all my, a lot of money’s tied up into this house now. And I can’t access that. So I could be missing out opportunities. So like the evolution of my belief on debt is changing. And I think that’s okay. Like I think you go through seasons of that. I think it’s totally okay to do. We paid off the debt when the market was crushing it right for years and years. And I paid off a mortgage at what, 3.5%. So the average person who might be listening to your podcast is like, dude, the average, the market got whatever and real estate got a lot. And here you paid off your mortgage at 3.5%, but I will tell you like my spirit and the weight on my shoulders has been completely lifted and I don’t feel any burden of that. So like it’s hard to put a price tag on that too.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. Well, and even through that evolution, I mean, I’ve even a year ago, I would be the guy that would say, I’ve got a bunch of equity in my house right now. In my mind its false equity and I don’t want to go out and pull that equity because in a year or two, I think I’m going to owe, if I go pull that equity, I’m probably going to owe a half a million dollars on my house more than what it’s going to be worth. So there’s an evolution on the other side of that too, that I think you bring up a great point. Like we’ve got to have those conversations, but even in my personal house right now, a couple of years ago, I would’ve said man, leverage that and go buy more real estate, but there’s cycles in the market to where like, even right now my wife and I are having a conversation, like, do we sell our house? I’m definitely not going to borrow against it because to your point, there’s weight of what’s coming in the world too. And so there’s different world cycles that you have to watch for when you’re talking about the debt conversation too.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. And I think that’s where it’s okay to be in seasons of it. So I mean, if we got, well, our house is completely paid off, but we’re selling it. And so, I could take that money. There’s a lot that we could do with it. And you and I talked about this and I kind of want to sit on it because I don’t, like you had said, I think something’s brewing and coming that I don’t, I’m pretty happy I don’t have any debt as a result. And I’m happy that I’ve got liquidity to jump on a few opportunities. So that I’m really thankful for that. But yeah, I mean, it happens in seasons and how I feel about debt I think is going to kind of mirror that season and how the markets are playing out.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. And I tend to look at a lot of things through the question of, well, what if I’m right and what if I’m wrong? And really, I love the conversation that we’ve been having because more times than not, you’re going to be in the safe, your teaching and your methodology is going to be in the safe zone. More times than somebody who is like leverage, leverage, leverage. So there’s a small percentage of people that I think probably get it right and time it right. And some of that’s experience and knowledge and some of that’s luck, but the percentage of people that time that right, versus the percentage of people that get wiped out through debt is probably 10 to 90, 90% getting wiped out. And so when I bring that back to my frame of reference of, well, what if I’m right. Well, if I’m right, maybe I got lucky and we built this portfolio, but what if I’m wrong? And when I look at it through that lens, it’s really, it’s opening my mind to what you teach in your debt, teaching in courses is probably, it’s probably a safer, what if I’m right versus what if I’m wrong conversations.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. It kind of cuts the edges off of the risk. So we went through this methodology, it’s a slow, methodical process to building wealth and it’s not going to happen quick. So it is, I mean, but it isn’t for everyone not everyone’s comfortable with that. And people want to go a bit faster. People want more risks and that’s totally fine. With all the consumer debt that’s in the world, like there’s a lot of job security in what I am offering to people.
Mike Ayala: Okay. So let’s talk a little bit more about like that evolution how’d you get into it, just because you guys paid off your debt and, and started changing your mindset around it and then…
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah, that was pretty much it. So I had found Dave Ramsey through that process. And oddly enough, when I was a high school business teacher, I taught Dave Ramsey’s course to high schoolers. And I don’t know about you, but when I was in high school, there wasn’t personal finance. And I wish it was more prevalent. It’s starting to become more prevalent, but not a lot of school systems make it required in order to graduate. That’s what I’d really liked to see just some requirements around personal finance. So I really got into it then, and I just poured myself into learning. For two years, I was teaching business, I would drive 65 miles to teach. So I just consumed podcasts after, which is amazing. I mean, it’s a commuters, master’s degree in personal finance. People have so much time and there’s so much resources out there to learn. There really isn’t an excuse. So I just poured myself into learning it. And then we did Dave Ramsey’s plan, mostly, we went down to his studio and we did our debt free scream live with him last May, a ton of fun. However, not one plan works for every person. So when I went through it, I was like, yeah, I like it. But his teaching, if you don’t know, is a series of steps and his first step is save a thousand dollars and I’m like, man, a thousand dollars right now, if you were one of the 40 million people that got unemployed, how long is that going to last you? So there’s just, I mean, I think there are a few things that I like with him, but there are some things that I probably disagree a little bit. And I just kind of created a course out of what I learned, what I know, what I liked and what I didn’t like and refined it as we went. But that was kind of it, it’s everything I learned through the entire process.
Mike Ayala: That’s cool. As we’re talking through this conversation, I’m thinking of two different things in my life where when I was young, before I started my first company, which was when I was 24, I remember having to borrow money from my boss a couple of times. And this is funny, I actually borrowed the money to buy my wife’s wedding ring. That’s how poor I was back then, but, or how bad I was with my money. So I’m kind of like, I’m having these like revelations as I’m listening to you. I’ll never forget having to borrow money from him a couple of different times. And we had some issues with our oldest son, some medical issues and this and that. And, he was always there to help. And but then there was this period of time where I went to him to borrow money and he said, Mike, you got to get this figured out, man. You can’t keep relying on me to be your bank and he’s the nicest guy in the world. But when he said that, he also told me, he said, look, I’m not trying to be mean here, but if you want to find, when you have an employee that can’t manage their own money that’s the first thing that I kind of look at. If you can’t manage your own money, I wonder sometimes how you can manage my own. And he was trying to give me lessons to, he was grooming me for leadership and I ended up going on to run some really large jobs for him. Probably more than anybody my age ever had. But it was those lessons. And I never even really thought much about that until I’m just talking to you about this and, I wasn’t at a place where I could manage my own money and just seeing that mirror and how he said that just kind of eye-opening looking backwards at it.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. I think we remember a few instances like that in our life that really kind of change us. They changed the trajectory of things. And so a lot of times those are humbling conversations, humbling experiences, but those are the most important and impactful.
Mike Ayala: So you guys paid off the $400,000 a debt, and then you kind of set this mission to go out there and help other people do that. What does that process look like?
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. So a few different ways that I do this. I currently have group coaching that I do through zoom. And that’s a process where I bring about 10 people together at once. If I do more than 10, it just gets to be hard to get the one on one interaction that people crave and there’s too many people. So I do what I call 99 days to money momentum. So over the course of just over three months I walk with people through this process that I teach them through. We deal with the very tactics, fundamental to start like budgeting, tracking your, spending all this, and then we’ll get into more money mindset because I think a lot of people maybe don’t realize this, but you’ve got a blueprint on how you interact with money and what’s your relationship with money is. And unfortunately that was probably modeled by people that maybe we didn’t want it modeled by, but that’s just the way it goes. So we work on rewriting, a blueprint that you have with money and your relationship with money to help people lift the lid on what they think is possible and what they’re worthy of. So that whole process takes us, just over 90 days. So I currently do that through group and then I also do kind of like one-on-one higher level stuff for people that maybe their situations are more complex. Maybe they’re not comfortable talking about it with anyone else. And they would just rather have me as a one-on-one resource. And then in 2021, I’ll release a video course as well. So people could just kind of plug in and watch it as they want to watch it. And it will be significantly cheaper. So I currently have two ways to work with me and the third one is coming.
Mike Ayala: That’s awesome. And I think your timing on that video course is probably going to be impeccable just looking at what’s coming. And, I think this is probably again, just shifting my mindset a little bit because I’m move fast, move far, move, just let’s go. But I think right now is probably the time where people really need to be number one, I probably wouldn’t advise most people to be investing right now. There’s still good deals out there, but you’ve got to know what you’re looking for. And so I think right now, probably the best thing people could do is really like fortify their personal lives. And I love what you said earlier. And maybe this isn’t exactly how you said it and I’d love you to correct me if it was different, but you don’t have to sacrifice your personal balance sheet in order to advance your, you don’t have to, can you share that?
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah, I’ll do it again. Cause it’s a tongue twister man, and I got to, I got to think clear before I say it too, you don’t have to sacrifice your personal balance sheet for your professional balance sheet because there’s no amount of success at work that covers up for a failure at home.
Mike Ayala: That’s so good. And so when you were just talking about that, the money mindset, I think that’s why that is so important because I don’t care if you’ve got no money or a hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars or a hundred million dollars, you’re always going to have that same problem.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. And you will, you almost always self-sabotage. So if you can’t and this was a big learning for me, Mike, was that okay, I’m making good money when I was going through this process and I’m like, man, do you know what would fix this problem is if I just made more money, but it will never work that way. Because if you can’t handle managing a hundred grand a year, what makes you think you’re going to manage a million a year? It doesn’t matter. It’s like building muscle throughout the process. The same thing is true. Like if you can’t give $10 for a cause right now, if you’ve given more money, what makes you think you’re going to be able to give more? You have to be able to work on that now. And I’m a man of faith. And so to me it was like, well, God, just, can you just give me more money? I’ll figure it out. Put yourself in his shoes. Like, why would he, be like, dude, why would I give you more money when you can’t handle what I’ve currently been given to you? So those are some of the real mind twists that I had to work through and really got me straightened out in a hurry.
Mike Ayala: That’s so good. We were just at the event in Breckenridge. And one of the things that David Osborne was talking about is like, who do I have to get rid of in my life? What about me do I have to get rid of, and then who do I have to become in order to get to where I want to go? And that’s exactly what I’m hearing you say is like in order to really progress, you’ve got to become a different person. You’ve got to change the way you’re thinking. And that’s really what I’m hearing that you help people do around money.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. You’ve got to make room for the new, by getting rid of some of the old, and I really, I literally was just on before you and I jumped on, I had a couple that I was coaching through and the gentleman had some money blueprint issues that stemmed way, way, way back. And he’s trying to step into a new version of this, but he’s got to release that first. And if he doesn’t, he’s not going to be able to, he will continue to sell sabotage and it will just be a cycle he’ll continue to be stuck in.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. And I think this kind of goes back to the lug nuts on the NASCAR. Sometimes this isn’t comfortable, like it’s not comfortable looking at a mirror and I think a lot of people want to avoid it, but the thing that I’ll throw out there right now, just having spent some time with you, like if I was going to have somebody dig into those deep areas of my life, I’d want it to be you, man.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah. I enjoy it and I’ve been there too. So all the conversations I asked people to have I’ve had as well. And so I think that’s the, hopefully people realize like that, if you want someone to guide you in this process, it should be someone who’s been there and I’ve been into all those deep, dark conversations that aren’t fond, they’re not comfortable. And yeah. I love going through that process with people.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. It’s a parent and you’re so passionate about it. So I want to dig on some. So a lot of my listeners, I think are probably still in the W2 realm. They’re working on their career, but they’re understanding that, they want some form of freedom. Tell me what that journey was like, like climbing the corporate ladder, having the revelation and then going to teaching and coaching and talk us through that.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. So I had like a revelation in, it was Thanksgiving Day of 2013. I was in the video game, distribution e-commerce world. So right Black Friday, all that stuff is our big time. And my wife and I were hosting my parents from Wisconsin, my brother from Wisconsin and my other brother from Washington at that time. And on Thanksgiving morning, I had to go into work at 3:00 AM and I get in there and I look around and there’s no one in here, no one at work just me. And I’m asking, I’m like, what am I doing? I’ve I have my family who, they’re all from out of state, they’re visiting for a holiday that I’m supposed to be hosting. And here I am on my own building someone else’s empire. And I’m like, is this worth it? And I just had that moment that I had to sit in that feeling and say, I’m putting work in front of family and it’s not even my own business that I’m building. I’m like what’s going on here. And so that was a really tough conversation, but I had to have it because that’s what started the process. So someone’s in it and they’re like, man, I’m W2. I want to get out, do my own thing. First, understand that it is a process. It’s not going to happen overnight, but literally every single day I wanted to walk into work and to say, I’m done. I quit. But unfortunately my wife and I had, we were living our means up to two incomes. So I couldn’t do it. So first it’d be understand that it’s a process. Second would be to really have some sort of plan. And that probably involves finances. And that might involve getting your lifestyle down to one income so that you can pull the plug and start to work on something else. And then I asked Mike, I asked several questions like okay, what am I really good at? What do I love doing? And how is my story somewhere in the middle of this that can impact others through doing what I’m doing. And if you can put all those things together, you’ll find some real magic and that’s designing around fulfillment that I call. It’s using your gifts, your talents and your story to make an impact on other people. So if you can find a way to do that and you will, and with courage and with boldness go after it, you’ll have success. What’s funny is you’ll get to success then. So those are the things that I would say to someone who’s in a W2 and wants to get out of it. That’s how I did it. And that’s how I coach people how to do it.
Mike Ayala: That designing around fulfillment. That’s really the, that’s your process. You take me through that.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. We look at how you’re uniquely gifted and talented and more often than not, you’re probably overlooking what that is. Because as I was going through the debt free process, I’m like, everyone knows this stuff. Everyone knows how to get out of consumer debt. Everyone knows all these things, but I completely under, was not putting any value on the fact that maybe I knew something that could be monetized here. We take that for granted, I think.
Mike Ayala: Well, and even if conceptually, you think people understand that, maybe they have the inkling that, at 30,000 foot they get it, but they need somebody to, and that’s where it gets scary. That’s the vulnerability, a lot of people don’t, and I often say that until the pain of where you’re currently at becomes stronger than the pain that it’s going to take to get there. You won’t do anything about it, but having somebody like you, I look at this visually as like bumpers, when you’re bowling, having somebody like you that can guide us and adjust us along the way is super important. Because even though we can see the pins clear down there, we might not be great bowlers and we need people like you in our lives. And so I think it’s awesome what you do, and I love that designing around fulfillment and that entire process. So it’s pretty cool.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. I didn’t know you were a bumper bowler, but I’ll remember that.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. Well, it’s like my golf game, right? Yeah. If you could give me some bumpers on that golf course. Yeah, so Kyle’s actually stretching me, I often talk about this at investing for freedom, but what do you really want? Why do you want it? What are you going to do to get it? Measure results and adjust. It’s extremely important. But I’ve had on my own goals list to golf once a week for a while, because I’ve wanted to become a better golfer. But when I sign up for an event where I know that I’m about to be golfing on one of the best courses in the world, I changed my goal. And this is why I told Kyle this on after the trip. But I set a goal to hit 500 golf balls a week. So when you bring that down, like to me, I wasn’t golfing once a week. I never stuck to that goal. But if I say I’m going to hit 500 golf balls a week, it just brings it down and it brings it in perspective.
Kyle Depiesse: I don’t remember who said this, but I heard this somewhere. It’s always stuck with me, but the magic happens after you commit. And if you look at this example and it might be kind of a fun example, you committed to this experience. And now you’re like, well, now I got to figure out how to do this. But if you hadn’t of had like this commitment, like I’m committing, I’m jumping in, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten around to it in months, or if ever. And then you can take that same, little fun saying and apply it to anything, the magic really happens after you commit.
Mike Ayala: Well, I think sometimes there’s no sense of urgency or we even think we have time. And it’s just even bringing it back to, what you teach people. We think we have time, I’ll deal with that debt later. I’ll create my plan to get out of my W2. By the way, there’s a ton of people that don’t ever want to leave their W2 jobs and that’s okay. No, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t want more things out of life. I think 95%, 99% of us want more out of life than what we’re currently doing or achieving. And so that’s where, beginning to get real about that and having the conversation is extremely important. There’s no sense of urgency because we think we have time. But the reality is if you don’t start taking actions and steps and commit to going to Pinehurst with Kyle, then there’s no sense of urgency. If you’re listening right now and you’ve been thinking about this and you want to make some moves toward, and again, it’s not about a W2 job or investing or anything else, it’s just changes around your money mindset and your financial life might be a good time to reach out to Kyle.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I answer any and all questions on Instagram. I’m most active on that one. And I just enjoy, I enjoy the process of just guiding people on a path. I have a lot of fun with it. I’m super passionate about it. And I’m also passionate about golf too. So I’m not, that doesn’t mean I’m good at it, but I’m passionate about it, I enjoy it.
Mike Ayala: That’s how you actually sold me. You’re like, I’m not an amazing golfer. And I’m like, well, there’s a big difference between not amazing and sucks. I suck.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean that of course can humble anyone so we could all be really bad that day. You never know.
Mike Ayala: Cool. Well, I think as Eleanor Roosevelt said, we need to do something every day that scares us. So what have we not talked about that you want to share?
Kyle Depiesse: Oh man. I’ll leave people maybe with this thought. So I don’t know if you can see it Mike in the background, but in 2018 I did an iron man and I want people to understand, like I’m not an endurance athlete, not at all. And when I started it, I couldn’t run for more than 15 minutes at one time before I was done, I couldn’t do more than 10 laps in a pool. And I couldn’t bike more than 20 minutes. And through the process of stretching myself continuously, I did the iron man and I finished it just under 14 hours and you swim 2.4 miles, you bike 112 and you run 26.2 and I could not even come close to doing one of those. Much less you put, you stack them. But I was just, you really have to enjoy the journey. And the journey goes fast because when I crossed the finish line, the finish line was a cool little red carpet. U2 was on playing pump in the background. It was amazing. And then you cross the finish line and you look around and you’re like, it’s over, now what? So I just, no matter where people are, I just want to encourage them to enjoy the process. You’ll get wherever you are like, we’ll get wherever you’re going at some point. And then you’ll get there and you’ll say now what? So I just want people to be really encouraged wherever they are. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and enjoy the process.
Mike Ayala: That’s amazing. Some great wisdom there. I think there’s the title of our podcast. So I appreciate that, man. That’s crazy. So where can people find you Kyle?
Kyle Depiesse: Instagram. Just Kyle_Depiesse is good. I most active there. I’m on LinkedIn too. Facebook, not quite as much. And then if anyone is interested in checking out the golf thing, just head to my website, www.kyledepiesse.com and you’ll find it, it’s under experiences, some fun videos on there from previous events of dog sledding and things like that. So if you want to get hyped up, go check out the website and you’ll get pretty excited about it.
Mike Ayala: I love it. And we’ll put links to that in the show notes, just in case you can’t spell his name.
Kyle Depiesse: I wouldn’t be surprised. Yeah.
Mike Ayala: Cool. Well, I really appreciate your time and thank you for all the wisdom that you share. And it’s just getting to know you the last couple of weeks has been eye-opening for me. So I think it’s going to be a treat for our listeners.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah, I appreciate it. And thanks for having me on and sharing your platform with me, Mike. It’s been awesome. Thank you.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. Have a good day.
Kyle Depiesse: You too.
Mike Ayala: Cool, man.
Kyle Depiesse: Alright. That was fun, man.
