ASHISH NATHU
September 30, 2021
2:36 pm
On this episode of The Rich Equation Podcast, Ashish is joined by Kyle Depiesse. Ashish and Kyle discuss a series of topics throughout this episode. Ashish and Kyle speak openly and honestly about how different cultures deal with money, how most people tend to live in the present which is something that tends to hurt them in the long run, how we get so caught up in our career defining our identity and so much more. Finally, Kyle shares some of his best advice and encourages you to be where your feet are.
ABOUT KYLE DEPIESSE:
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, 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.
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro 0:03 – Ashish gives a brief description of this episodes guest, Kyle Depiesse 0:46 – Ashish explains how this episode will cover the topic of how financial planning is a team effort and how every different culture deals with discussion of money and debt 6:00 – Kyle mentions how he used to be a public high school teacher 7:47 – Kyle speaks about the goal and incentives behind the education system and it’s biggest flaws 8:13 – Kyle states that we should be teaching our kids how to think critically and teaching them skills that are useful in a capitalistic structure that will help them strive after school 9:33 – Kyle mentions how he believes in teaching something that is relevant and will aid us in the future chapters of our lives 10:53 – Ashish speaks about a book he read recently about delayed gratification 13:32 – Kyle speaks about what he thinks causes people to get into debt 15:26 – Kyle speaks about how most people struggle and they tend to live in the present and that hurts them down the road which is a theme we see in finance, entrepreneurship, relationships and health 17:03 – Kyle speaks about the four lessons that he relates to his journey on re-adjusting his relationship and mindset with money 20:12 – Kyle states that you have to have a compelling vision that pulls you into the future that you want, otherwise what is it all for 21:09 – Kyle talks about the process of accepting the fact that he wanted to be a dad who stayed at home and raised his son and how that was challenging at times 22:55 – Kyle states that a lot of the time people are sacrificing their personal balance sheet for their professional one 26:43 – Ashish speaks about how we get so wrapped up in our identity and we grow up thinking our career or our family name is our identity 27:31 – Kyle informs us about experiences and safe spaces he has created for men 30:50 – Kyle mentions how it’s so important for people to know that they’re not alone 31:23 – Kyle discusses how when you give people the opportunity to step into a little bit of fear, they tend to emotionally bond so much quicker with each other than if they just met up to chat about football at a bar 32:48 – Ashish states that everybody is looking for realness and authenticity from companies and brands and how Kyle has provided people the opportunity to get that instantly 33:42 – Kyle mentions how it’s his responsibility to recruit the right people, people who are as interested in the success of others as they are themselves 34:45 – Ashish asks Kyle what keeps him up at night 38:48 – Kyle informs us that the piece of advice he shares the most is “be where your feet are”. Kyle speaks about how he really values being in the moment and present 40:22 – Kyle expresses how true richness to him is enjoying the fullness of life and experiencing life to the fullest
FIND KYLE DEPIESSE:
Instagram: @kyle_depiesse
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kyle.depiesse
Website: www.kyledepiesse.com and for a list of 2022 experiences: https://www.reachingbeyondexperience.com/experiences
Podcast: Reaching Beyond
Kyle’s new book will be coming out in Q1 of 2022, it’s called “Guys Trip: Refocusing on What Matters Most”
TRANSCRIPTION:
Welcome back to the rich equation podcast. It is my honor to have Kyle Depiesse on the show. After 15 years in corporate America, hitting rock bottom and completely burned out. Kyle left everything to start designing a life around fulfillment. Kyle is a creator and founder of the reaching beyond experience rooted in assisting others in achieving their highest levels of fulfillment in how they connect with others, connect with themselves, and build their careers. After 2015, he spent a season as a stay at home. Dad finished an iron man, started his own business, started the reaching beyond podcast. And along with his wife paid off almost $400,000 to become completely debt free. On this episode, we get into how financial planning is a team effort and how every different culture deals with this discussions of money and debt. Kyle explains how we must rethink all conventional assumptions and reset our sites on big audacious goals. And overall, Kyle is a deep thinker and amazing man. I know you will really lean into this one. Enjoy, here It is with Kyle Depiesse. And remember if you enjoy this episode, be sure to share it with someone that would be inspired by this or this information could be helpful and subscribe right now to the podcast and leave a review so we can continue to bring value to you.
Welcome to the Rich Equation podcast. Are you ready to discover how to live rich today and not wait for retirement? If you’re tired of struggling and want to live your best life now, you are in the right place.
Outdated principles will no longer work in today’s environment. It’s time for a new approach. Your host Ashish Nathu will help you discover methods to live the new American dream. It’s time to start living the good life on your own terms and experience a new way to live rich. Now here’s your host Ashish Nathu.
Ashish Nathu: Welcome to the show Kyle Depiesse. How are you, sir?
Kyle Depiesse: I’m good, man. Thanks for having me. You’ve nailed the last name. You got it. And I got to tell you I’m excited to be here. So thanks for having me on.
Ashish Nathu: Well, I really appreciate your time and super grateful for you and everything that you stand for and your message and your journey and how you share with the world. And we’ll get into a lot of the things that you’re doing and actually some of the things that I get to participate in. Yeah. But I noticed you shaved your beard, my friend.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. So there’s a couple things, right? So first I live in the north woods.
Ashish Nathu: You have like a big bushy Jesus style beard. So let’s not like people who are listening are like, oh my God, they’re talking about shaving. Like, no, Kyle has a prominent beard.
Kyle Depiesse: Thanks. And I’m proud of it. And so in the Northwest of Minnesota, it gets cold in the winter. So my agreement with my wife because she does not love my beard. So my agreement with her from first snowfall until when the ice melts on the lake, like fall winter, I get to let the beard go. I’ve got a trim. I’ve got to shape it. It can’t just be this out control thing. And so, you know, we’re in the summer right now. End of summer when we’re recording this. And so I cut it, but I trim it even further. So when we’re recording this today, my son is four, just a little bit over four years old. And today was his first day of school. And so dad, myself, I am his teacher and now he’s pre-K right? So like I’m using school pretty loosely here in quotes. If I can get 15, 20 minutes of like, you know, writing some things like, like if I can get his attention, I’m thrilled. So I thought to myself this morning, I’m like, well, I want him to know, like, this is a, a fun thing. This is cool. This is good. And we should take it seriously. And so how do kids learn? Well, kids learn by watching what other people do. [04:08 inaudible] than taught. So I’m like, I’m going to take this serious. So I said, Cal, my son’s name is Cal. I was like, I’m dressing up. I’m putting a polo on and I’m shaving and I’m trimming and I’m going to look good doing my hair, like normally I wear a hat. And I wear a t-shirt like, that’s kind of my style. That’s my brand because I want him to know, like, this is a serious thing. Dad takes it serious. And if we can create a transition from play time to school, by changing, just changing your clothes similar to as professionals working from home, and then we can transition out of it, put the play clothes black back. It just, it becomes this thing. And, you know, I think it’s, you’ll hear the story as a stay at home dad for a while. It’s just really important for me to be a big impact and influence in my son’s life. So that today made its way through in this world by just shaving my beard and trimming it up.
Ashish Nathu: And I love it. Dress the part. Dress the part, sir. Professor that’s so awesome. You know, it was really funny not to get off too off track. But I was listening to I think it was Mike Ayala’s podcast talking about and who actually Mike introduced both of us. But he was talking to somebody about a four or five hour school week. Have you heard of this?
Kyle Depiesse: No.
Ashish Nathu: Where kids there’s an entire movement of people and I’m not promoting anything good, bad, or ugly, but just something super fascinating that, you know, sort of like the Tim Ferris strategy of work of the four hour work week, they have this methodology of how can we cram the educational process into five hours a week so that kids can spend more time playing, spending time with their family traveling, experiencing things. And I just thought that was really fascinating. And I know you do a lot of that stuff with Cal and take him out, have guys trips and stuff like that, which is really fun.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Well, I used to be a public school teacher, high school teacher for two years. So you get a peek behind the scenes and we’re fortunate, we’ve got one kid. And so I can teach him a lot in a short period of time, man. There’s just not a lot of fluff that we have to go.
Ashish Nathu: That’s right. That’s exactly what these guys are talking about.
Kyle Depiesse: You can get a lot done in a short period of time and that’s our goal because we want to get outside and we want to experience the great outdoors and all the lessons that just can come from that. So yeah, that’s what we’re working towards.
Ashish Nathu: Well, we’re definitely going to get into education and financial literacy, and I know that’s a subject matter that is near and dear to you and you speak that truth. And I suppose, you know, some of the things that, I mean, let’s kind of start there is, you know, your background of being in corporate America for 15 or so years, and really asking the question like, is this the way I want to live my life? Is this fulfilling to me. At that time, you know, you speak pretty publicly about, you know, your financial situation and the amount of debt you had and how you, you know, how you got there is less relevant than how you got yourself out of it, which I think is, you know, a lot of your messaging and the way we’re educated about money and money, money mindset and our attachment to money. And so I guess, I guess what’s my question, right? Start with sort of, sort of why is it that our system educates us the way it educates us? And where do you see the biggest flaw and then like what’s the number one piece of advice you find yourself giving?
Kyle Depiesse: Oh man, is that a good question. We could jam on this one for a while. So you have to think about what’s the goal of the school system and, where are the incentives behind that? So I was a business teacher. Fortunately I was in a school district that made require personal finance to graduate. It was not elective you, it was required. And then they also required a semester of economics. And I think that is beautiful. That’s brilliant. I like that. I’m an advocate for that because I think that we should be teaching our kids how to critically think and then teaching them that can, they can go out into the marketplace and use for good, right? We live in a capitalistic structure. So we need to teach them skills that are meaningful and will help them thrive past school. I think unfortunately too much of the time we’re focused on teaching to successful ACT and SAT scores. And a lot of times you know, some of the things that we teach under those banners, aren’t really relevant in the real world anymore, made a lot of sense in the industrial era. It made a lot of sense then, but we have not evolved like we should. So I came in and I taught entrepreneurship. It was taught before I was there, but I forced that class. I shouldn’t say forced. I strongly encourage that class to start a coffee shop, start something where they could be generating money, where they have cost, where they have profit and they figure out what to do with it. Like we can talk about theory behind that stuff, and we could study theory, or I can put them into an environment where they are forced to learn it real life, real time and make those decisions that will actually have an impact on something. So that’s what I believe in. I leave in teaching something that is relevant and will help you successfully navigate the next chapter and next chapters in life. I don’t think that that always is the way that our school system is currently working. But that’s just, that’s kind of where we’re at. And that’s how we’re seeing a lot more people kind of move into different ways of learning right now. I mean, I’m converting, this is a little bit off topic, but you’ll like this, I think I’m converting the shed that we have down by the lake. I’m converting it into a sauna. Well, I’m just Youtubing it, I’m learning that as a skill and you would be shocked like you won’t, because you know this, but you can learn so much at your fingertips, how much inform and knowledge is out there. And that’s going to disrupt, I think, education going forward. But that’s just a simple example is, shed to a sauna I’m 41 years old. I’m figuring this out on my own. Kids can do the same thing. And so my goal had always been, how do I teach kids to critically think, how do I give them skills so that they can be successful in the marketplace? And then knowing that, that we best learn by doing so, how do I give them that environment? So that was kind of my approach to teaching.
Ashish Nathu: So good. There was a book I was reading a couple days ago about delayed gratification and they had this study and I’m sure you’ve heard about this is that they’ve had this study where they give kids like marshmallows. And I actually did it with my kids this weekend after reading this thing. And I gave them one marshmallow and I said, and my kids are two and four. So kind of like Cal where they’re just old enough to understand, but like understanding of marshmallows and what it takes to get a marshmallow, like they’re totally in tune. So I said, you get one marshmallow right now. And I put it on a plate in front of them. And I said that if you wait for five minutes, you can get three marshmallows. And they comprehended it. I asked them to repeat what I said, they comprehended it. And they actually waited five minutes and they got three marshmallows. Now, I tell that story because, what the study shows is that there’s about a third of the kids that actually wait. And the study shows that you have to wait for 20 minutes, but, you know, I was just practicing, it’s long time for a kid to wait. And so what they realized is that they followed these kids 20, 30 years after these studies. And they saw that they lived healthier lives. They took care of themselves. They had better relationships. They did more successfully in their careers and their jobs because of this idea of delayed gratification and kind of tying it back to money and kind of what you see is, you know, what is it that causes people to get into bad financial situations? Is it our lack of education and like the way we’re educated as kids and the way we talk about money as kids or, you know, through adolescence, if you will, or is it our relationship with money that, like, we just have a consumer type of environment where fed products to consume all the time. It has nothing to do with education. It has to do with our environment that we’re in. Where do you see the trend of, the majority of people. And I think that a lot of people fall in that category. Like, I won’t say that, you know, the awareness of money mindset is a proclivity of the general population. I think people are starting to talk about it, right. There’s sort of pioneers in the space, but like this is still a new, relatively new topic, 5 or 10 years. So what do you see?
Kyle Depiesse: So to your point, and to what we just talked about, I don’t know how is no longer an excuse. I mean, we can say it’s an excuse, but it’s no longer a valid excuse because you can simply, I mean, how many resources are available? Like books, podcasts, YouTube, Google, like, so we can no longer say that. Money mindset, what was our money blueprint, the environment that were grown up in that plays a role in it. But I think to what you just said in the marshmallow theory, I’ve seen the video and it’s really cute. You should send a link in your show notes, If people haven’t seen it, it’s really good. But the whole point there, and I believe that as well, most people don’t know how to play the long game. And it’s the same thing. He year it’s making short-term sacrifices, sorry, it’s making long-term sacrifices for a short-term win. And most people cannot like, absolutely cannot understand that concept. All you have to do to be successful, especially for this conversation, as it relates to money. Can you make short-term sacrifices that’ll gain you in the long term and most people cannot do that. I mean, I taught high school personal finance, and it’s just funny to watch the kids that you teach and you are like, I think they got it. And then you’ll see a little bit later, You’re like, darn it they did not get it, you know, and you see them graduate high school, they’re in college taking on debt. And then they post how they just bought a brand new car on Facebook and like, look at my big boy or big girl purchase. And I’m just thinking to myself, I’m like, oh my gosh. Like, I drove like a 20 year old, just beat up car as long as I possibly could because I knew that like, if I could just kind of hang onto this thing, I don’t need to go out and buy a $25,000 Jeep right now when I’m in college and I’ve got all these student loan debts, like just, you don’t need to do that. So I think most people struggle and they live in the present, they live in the now and that hurts them down the road. And that’s a theme that we could talk about in finance, in entrepreneurship, in relationships, in health. It doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing across the board.
Ashish Nathu: Yeah. And I’m not even going to pretend to know what’s going on because I think the world is so different than it was. Like, I remember a phone used to be $50. And like, we would consider like, oh my God, that guy has a $99 phone. Like I’m going to buy a $50 phone. Nowadays people walk around with a thousand dollars phone, Like it’s nothing. And we’re not talking about a 3% increase of inflation here. So just really bizarre, like the spending behavior and the mindset behavior without earning capacity.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent.
Ashish Nathu: You talk about these four lessons that through your journey, you really talk about a lot and you say that, you know, I can only control my outcome. I cannot control my circumstances. Having a money mindset and understanding money is a team effort. And I love this one, rethink everything when it comes to understanding your relationship with my money. And then the fourth one is reset your sites on a big audacious skull. Tell me about that.
Kyle Depiesse: So I think to paint the story, this would be in between 2015 Christmas, and then New years of that year. I always do this nerdy thing where I kind of sit down and I recap the year in PowerPoint. And I look at every category of life that I define as important, right? Spirituality, finances, health, relationships, hobbies. And I just do an honest assessment, like how did I do, how did I do versus how I thought I was going to do? And then I project the next year, like, what are my goals? And I sit down with my wife and we go through this together. Well, finances, that’s easy because there’s metrics, right. And the metrics don’t really lie. The numbers don’t lie to you. So I got down this rabbit hole that one year, and I looked at social security website and I just was interested to see what my projected social security earnings would be. Www.Ssa.Gov, everybody, you can go do that yourself. And we can argue about how long social security will be around, If it’s a thing, does it matter? Will it, you know, put that aside for a second, but what it does, it projects your social security at retirement, but it uses your life to date earnings. So I’m not sure if you have ever done this, but I did. And I had made at that time, when I looked in my mid-thirties, I had made well over a million dollars in my life. And I just, it was such a cognitive dissonance for me because I looked around, well, where did it all go? Like I don’t have it. And then I yelled to my wife, Lois, who’s in another room. I said, Lois, what’s your social security number. I want to do the same thing for you. And I did that for her plugged in her numbers, spits out her life to date earning, same thing for her. So combined well over 2 million and I’m looking around and I’m just, I’m angry. I’m frustrated, I’m confused. I’m embarrassed. I’m ashamed. Like it’s this cocktail of emotions that I wasn’t ready for. But it’s in that moment where you’re like, all right I got myself into this, I get myself out of this. And so that’s where I came. I come up with those things that you had just mentioned. So let me speak specifically to, you know, I did this with my wife, like we’re in a journey together, finances is one part of that journey and we just sat down and we said, okay, what we’ve been doing hasn’t worked, it’s gotten us here, let’s do something different. And so we just started to implement Dave Ramsey’s plan mostly. And we just paid off a ton of money and in a relatively short period of time, and people will look at it from the outside and they’ll be like, wow, you know, $380,000 in 38 months. Now 38 months sounds like a long time when you’re in it. But again, being 41 years old, that was a really short period of my life, where we sat down. We said, we’re doing things a little bit differently here. And this is going to be what springboards us forward into living this life that we really, really wants. And that’s where that big audacious goal comes in is we sat down and we said, what do we want life to look like? Where do we want to live? What do we want to be doing? Where do we want to travel to, who do we want to hang out. All of those things and you’ve got to have this compelling vision that pulls you into this future that you wants. Otherwise, what’s it all for? And so that’s kind of where those elements came from.
Ashish Nathu: Well, one of the things that really resonates with me is, you know, and you embody, this is rethink everything. I mean, you’re a guy who is in corporate America, successful, made good money. Yeah you accumulated a debt for yourself, but you know, men, ego, I’m the breadwinner, right. If I have to work, and then in your stories like, well, wait a second, what do I really want? I just want to stay home with my son. I want to be a dad. And having the courage to look that in the mirror and face the truth of that. And that you’re not less of a man if I stay home and father, my kids and let my wife’s job and career thrive. Tell me about that process.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. It’s tough. We’ll suffer, both my wife and I want to acknowledge that and acknowledge her because it wasn’t easy for her either. But I can speak to my experience because it’s, cause it’s my experience. So as men, you know, we get tied up in our identity with work, right. And that’s where a lot of the ego come. So picture this, you’re in a space where you’re meeting people for the first time and the, you know, the guys kind of congregate over here and the women kind of congregate over here and you’re standing in a circle and you meet someone for the first time and you’re like, Hey man, what do you do? And you know, they share and it kind of goes around the circle and it’s coming towards me and I’m just sitting there. I’m like, oh please, someone just change the topic because I’m a stay at home dad. And sure enough, the question comes to me, Kyle, what do you do? And I’m like, I’m a stay at home dad. And the first several times I said that, you know, my body posture would kind of hang low, droop a little bit. I’m like it was, I felt like it was embarrassing. And then I got to this point where I’m like, wait a minute, I’m looking around and I’m seeing a lot of other men or parents maybe in general, who do not have a good relationship with their kids. And here I’ve got this beautiful opportunity to make all this influence and impact on my son and make all these positive deposits into his life. Why is that embarrassing? Why is that bad? And so I just started to reframe that completely shedding the ego and saying, I’m a stay at home dad. And the response was one of two things. It was either cool. How’s it going? Tell me more about that. Or the other response is like, this is really awkward. Let’s change this stuff. Like, so it’s amazing how people respond to that. And it’s because a lot of times I think in society, we define success professionally. And a lot of times people are sacrificing their personal balance sheet for their professional one. And I stopped that. I said, that’s not okay. Like, no amount of success at work is going to cover up for being a failure at home as a husband, as a father. And so I had this beautiful gift of swinging the pendulum all the way to the side and being home with my son for a period of time, which was an amazing gift. Number one, amazing gift to spend time with him. Number two, it gave me this gift of clarity and to say like, what I want to do with my life, I’ve got a white canvas. We’ve done the hard work of getting out of all this debt. We are making decisions differently. It’s no longer about the dollar. It’s about fulfillment. So how do I do that? And so then I just started to, I had this idea to be honest, I had the idea long time ago of creating these experiences and I finally had the chance to do it. And that was a couple years ago. So now fast forward to today. And here we are.
Ashish Nathu: Before we go to the experiences which I promised we will get to. And it’s one of the coolest things that you do. You know, just what that story reminded me was that, you know, also this is a cultural problem too, that I’m Indian in the Southeast Asian or Asian community in general, men and women generally don’t speak to each other about business and finances. And we grew up very much in that culture. And I think it still exists to be honest with you. I think in the American culture, there’s an expectation that like you grow up, you know, at 18 you leave the house, so you sort of become independent and you have to learn to deal. But, you know, we grow up in very combined cultures or big, large family culture, right? So there is very much this divide. And what I love about what you said was, you know, money and managing wealth and success, it is a team effort and the better communication you can have about it that aligns with your family vision and goals. It’s not that the man’s responsibility is to go do this or that, it’s both of our responsibility to align on an audacious goal. And if that happens to be that I’m the primary breadwinner or you’re the primary breadwinner. And so I think not getting away from taking ownership that designing the life you want is your responsibility as a family. I just thought that that was something that needed to be said because in our culture, that’s a really big issue.
Kyle Depiesse: Well, and to piggyback on what you just said, which is spot on, it’s a great observation. We looked at it as a season. We looked at it as, I mean, very few things right now are permanent, like this is a temporary thing. And we look back on this, it’s just a little, it’s a little blip within the entire scope of our life. Like I stayed home full-time with him, not working for a fraction, right. Fraction of our life and our relationship. And it’s not permanent. And so sometimes from the outside, you’re making a move where you’re like, Hey, it looks like they’re taking a step back, but we’re taking a step back really to propel ourselves forward. And we knew that was the path. And you have got to operate together under that decision that you do and you make together and you don’t really look to what other people are saying about you, because I’m sure people were wondering, you know, what exactly was going on. But we made the decision together. We had the path written out together and we knew it was just for a season of time.
Ashish Nathu: Man, Ego is a problem. And you’re right. It is completely temporary. Who’s to say, you can’t go back. You can’t make changes. You can’t adjust. I didn’t like it. I’m going to go back. We get so wrapped up in our identity. And I think that’s back to the cultural thing. Like we grow up that our career is our identity or our family name is our identity. We get very caught up with the relationship of our community, our reputation in that community. That’s very much how our Asian community is bred. So let’s talk about our experiences because that’s the most fun thing to talk about. Reaching beyond experiences and I’m not even going to try to butcher the concept because it’s a really beautiful thing you did. I’m going to copy it someday. I’ve told you that, I’ve already told you that, but you’ve created this really beautiful container, safe space for men. And tell us a little bit about it.
Kyle Depiesse: Well, and I don’t even know if I told you this, but it was an accident. So the first one I meant, and I created a couple years back, the north shore of Minnesota with helicopters coming in, it took us hovering over waterfalls. I just, I went out to my network and here’s the idea I had. I said, look, I’ve been to personal growth seminars and conferences. And in corporate America, I got sent to all the leadership things. And it’s all the same stuff. You go to a large hotel conference room, there’s no windows in that large hotel conference room. And you’re sitting next to hundreds, thousands of people, and you get a couple keynote speakers that you could probably YouTube their keynote speech. And I’m like, man, this isn’t inspiring to me. It’s not inspiring. I don’t learn this way. Remember I told you about how I believe we learn. We learn by experiencing, by doing. And so a couple years back, I was like, I’m just going to up this whole model on its head. And instead of hundreds of thousands of people, I want 10, 12, 16, instead of a hotel conference room, I’m using the great outdoors. I’m not really going to stand up on a podium and teach. I’m going to put you in an environment that you are forced to learn, and then we’re going to collectively talk about it. And so I had the idea. I put it out to my network. I reserved 10 rooms at this really cool hotel right on the north shore. And all people that showed up were dudes. And I’m like, wait a minute, I did not market to just dudes. I did not. And maybe it was the beard. Maybe it was the beard that just attracted dudes. I don’t know what it was, but what was really obvious to me was that over the course of those three days where we were together is, men don’t have a container like this to say, like, man, I’m freaking crushing and at work. But I feel like I could do better over here. Or I feel like I could do better over here. I don’t know how to handle that. Like how do I do that stuff? And I just, I created this container and we did waterfall stuff. We did helicopter stuff. We did the sauna into lake superior, which is about 50 degrees. I see you do the cold blood stuff. Like this is a really cold body of water and we had good food, good champagne, good wine. And I just allowed the guys to be guys and just to do that stuff. And it was amazing. And I was like, you know what? This is clear that I need to do this again. And so I did it again and I did it again and again, and again and again, there’s been is in there as well, which I’m happy to talk about, but that’s kind of how it’s evolved. And I just said, all right, this needs to be guys only because it’s clear to me that there wasn’t a good space for it. So that’s kind of how it came to be.
Ashish Nathu: And let me be clear. This is not a, this is not a bachelor party. This is right. And this is a, a deep, vulnerable, Men talking about their feelings, challenges, issues, weaknesses vulnerabilities. . And I think the reason why you’re able to keep doing it over and over is cause there’s a really strong need. Yeah. And men don’t have a space to do that and be with like likeminded people, right. That are going through the same things or don’t know where to talk about those topics.
Kyle Depiesse: Yeah. And I think it’s important that people understand that they’re not alone, right? That whatever they’re going through, whether it’s work life, whatever, dude, everyone’s got something that is not where they want it to be. And it isn’t something where we come together on a campfire and we, you know, hold hands and bear chest saying kumbaya on stuff. I don’t force anyone to do anything that they don’t want to do, but what seems to happen, here’s what I’ve noticed. And when you do your own, copy this and I’m happy to help you design it and come [31:23 inaudible] yours. But when you give people an opportunity to step into a little bit of fear, a little bit of get outside your comfort zone, what tends to happen is we’re more likely to like, Hey man, I just did this hovering over a waterfall on an open door helicopter with you. Do you think I’m going to have this bond with you where I’m more likely to share, like, dude works great. I got this one thing I’m kind of going through though. What do you think about it? Yeah, that happens so much quicker than it would otherwise where you just get together and talk fantasy football and stuff like that. Like, and that’s great too. I don’t bash that. I have all that in my life too. But once you experience conversations and high level people talking about realness and rawness and what’s going on, you just want more of it. And so at least half of my group is repeat [32:18 inaudible]. And I think hopefully the fruit to what I’ve created is shown in some of that work, but yeah, that’s kind of the beauty of it.
Ashish Nathu: I love that message. I mean, I just had a conversation with somebody regarding actually marketing, marketing, and branding and we were talking about how people, the consumers are now just looking for realness. They don’t want to talk to some corporate brand. They don’t want to be talking to corporate salespeople. Everybody’s looking now for realness, for authenticity, for vulnerability. And I think that you’ve created this space that you can get that instantly, right? Through experience in nature and so beautiful.
Kyle Depiesse: Through getting out of your comfort zone, man, like one element is always everyone in the group will be doing one thing that they’ve never done before. So as men, like, we want to be good. Like we want to be good at something. Our competitive nature comes out. Ego comes out. These are all highly successful people, but I’m going to humble everyone through one experience where you all get to say, I’ve never done this before. I probably look like an idiot. I suck at it, but I’m just going to do it anyway. And that’s a staple. That’s become a pillar to the experience is one thing in there. One thing I guarantee no one has done before, and that’s my job. And then my job is to bring the right people into it who are as interested as in the success of others as they are their own. Like that’s a staple and it’s my job to put the right people into these things. So it’s a great challenge. I love it. I love orchestrating all these experiences and then building a tribe with people that are going to support each other. And it’s cool, man. We have a lot of fun. We do two a year, in 2022 I’m doing four. It’s going to be a great year next.
Ashish Nathu: I have the honor of doing it with you in October and I’m super excited. And I know we’re doing a couple of things. And one of them I haven’t done in a while. And so I’m practicing, so I don’t look like a dufus. But the other one I’ve never done. And I think we’re taking expert lessons from a world renowned water skier. So I think that’ll be super amazing. And like you said, you know, everyone starts from zero, right. A lot of people have never done it before, so cool. What keeps you up at night, Kyle?
Kyle Depiesse: Oh, man. Well, I think you’ll get this, cause you have a four year old and a two year old and so Cal’s four, well, he’s almost, he’ll tell you he’s four and a half, but he’s not quite four and a half. But I feel just a deep sense of accountability responsibility for raising a child, to be someone who’s going to make a difference. Someone who’s going to stand up for what’s right. Someone who’s going to stand on the side of truth. And it just feels like we live in a world right now where there is an all-out assault on this stuff. And there is just an absolute desire for the heart’s mind and souls of our kids. And as a parent that keeps me up and I mean, I’ve got, literally I have 20, what do we got? 22, 23 nieces and nephews on my wife’s side. And we’re making this move, we’re building a house in grand forks, North Dakota. It’s two hours away from our lake place. So we’re going to keep this as our retreat, but I want to be an active role in their lives as an uncle. Because again, as a parent, you know, like it takes a lot to raise a kid and you need there’s so much there’s a [36:08 inaudible], I forget her title, child psychologist, or something like that, where she’s got a book out and there’s some studies done that you need three to four to five positive influences in a child’s life outside of mom and dad. And so I take it very seriously. Like I got to play a role, not just in my son, but in my nieces and my nephews and in the community because if I don’t do it, who’s going to do it.
Like you can’t just leave that up to someone else and hope they have their best interests in mind. So that’s what’s keeping me up. It’s a deep topic, man. And it’s something I’m really passionate about cause, the experiences we create, we donate money from that group to building orphanage homes and things like that. So it’s a deep responsibility that I have and I feel because I think there’s basically a war out there for the heart souls and minds of kids and I’ve got one of those kids. And so that’s really important to me.
Ashish Nathu: That’s so good. I, I don’t even know if I can match that. You, you said you wanted him to, you know, have a really strong wrong presence in the world and, and show up and stand up. What’s so good. I’m just, I’m starting at, let’s just be kind. And I think we, we say that all day and you know, as kids, you know, especially as toddlers, like knows the first word that comes out of their mouth and, and they’re learning that how to test boundaries and their personalities are so strong. I have two rambunctious, little girls and they are just full of energy, balls of energy. But we just really want to raise kind people. And I think for me, I’ve gone through my seasons of like being an entrepreneur being way too tough on people, not having compassion. You know, I’m not very opinionated about politics and things like that. But like generally speaking you know, you get into your own head and you get into your own rhythms and not care about what’s going on and giving people grace and understanding and compassion. And after you have kids that hits you really hard, I think for me, at least it did. And that level of responsibility between kids and teams and employees and your customers and all of that. And just like starting with being kind and giving people, grace the world needs a little bit more of that. What is one piece of advice you find yourself giving the most?
Kyle Depiesse: Oh man. That’s so good. And I’m going to repeat, this is not my quote, but I can’t tell you whose quote this is. So I apologize for that, but it’s be where your feet are. And it basically just is a call to be present, be present in the moment. And we’ve done that through our experiences. There’s few things I’ve experienced in life where I’m like, nothing else matters right now. And one of those things was fly fish. I don’t know if you’ve ever been, I’m not a fisherman at all, but we went fly fishing on our last one and you have to focus on just what’s right in front of you. And if you don’t, you miss it, you will miss it. You will miss the fish. And so I crave those times in life where I can put aside distractions. I can put aside all the stress I can put aside all the noise that goes on in my head. And I can just say, I just want to be present in this moment and I just want to be here. So I have a lot of, you know, time in terms of quantity with my son, but is it quality? Am I present with him? Is my phone going off with notification? Am I looking at those notifications? And it’s something that I work on a lot. And so I, I just like to share what I go through real time with people and that’s just be where your feet are and be present, be in the moment.
Ashish Nathu: So good. I’m going to ask you one last question and then we can exchange a riff or whatever we want at the end, but what does real richness mean to you?
Kyle Depiesse: Man, that’s a good question. I’ll tell you the first thing that pops into my head the Italians have lache Vida, right? The sweet life, Costa Ricans have pure Vida, right? Pure life, simple life. And I just got thinking about that and I’m like, what, what do we have? What do I have? What does that mean to me? And I think it’s enjoying the fullness of life and experiencing life to the fullest. And I’ve, I’ve tried to, as I’ve gotten a little bit, not to say that I’m old, but as I’ve gotten into my late thirties and now early forties, and I’ve got a little one running around, I’ve detached, you know, richness and success. I’ve detached that meaning from money, money is a part of it, but it is not all of it. And it used to be all of it. And some of the sweetest moments I’ve had, especially when we moved up here to the lake is just sitting by the water and looking out on the water with my son doesn’t involve anything, but just being in the moment and sitting with him and enjoying the simple pleasures of life. So if I think if I had to answer that question, what is richness? I go to fullness and I think of how am I and how can I experience the fullness of life so good.
Ashish Nathu: Thanks brother.
Yeah, this is fun, I enjoy it. Good questions coming through. I told you I’m sweating a little bit.
Ashish Nathu: I will tell the audience, I did not prepare him and I gave him a handful of questions, but I asked you a lot of things. I didn’t tell you in advance. So you did great man. I wanted it to be authentic. And I wanted you to just tell and you did a great job.
Kyle Depiesse: I, you know, I podcast too. And I, sometimes I write down questions cause I think I want to ask this question, but the question that I always want to ask is whatever is right in front of me and it’s wherever the conversation goes and, and that’s the best conversation. I’ve listened to some like big name people that go on podcast, they tell the same freaking things over and over again and it’s, they always pull it back and I’m like, how, how do we just get people off track and be authentic? And that right there, when you say that, like get off track to be authentic, that’s not good because you should just be a, like your track should be authentic and it’s what you’re dealing with and what you’re experiencing and1 processing real time. That’s authentic. And so I appreciate you asking the questions you did cause I think that was right on.
Ashish Nathu: Well look brother, thanks so much for doing this. I think I’d love to do this again with you sometime, maybe after the retreat and you’re just such a blessed guy and super cool to have met you and be in your circle.
Kyle Depiesse: Thanks man. I appreciate it. I’m looking forward to looking forward to seeing the Weka surfing and you need to know and your audience needs to know that we always put together a bloopers reel. Just be careful. I’ll just make sure that the drone and the video is constantly on you when you’re wake surfing. I’m kidding. We won’t, we won’t do that. We will do a bloopers reel, but I’ll give you a little bit of a break.
Ashish Nathu: Thank you brother. Appreciate you.
Kyle Depiesse: Thanks man.
Thank you for listening to the Rich Equation podcast with Ashish Nathu. Do you want more ideas on how to live rich? Go to www.richequationpodcast.com for show notes and resources. Then take one minute to leave Ashish, a five-star review on apple podcasts, and we’ll see you on the next episode.
