196. Pivoting and Happiness with Kyle Deever

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandee Sgarlata.

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Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia Beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

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Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together, and since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and, of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom, and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness. You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours.

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Today's episode is amazing, and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening, and don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at coach. Sandee Sgarlata. Enjoy the show.

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Kyle, such a great pleasure to meet you. We had such a great conversation before I hit record. I I actually almost forgot. Oh, yeah. We're here to record a podcast interview like Hit.

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Let's hit record. So great to have you here. How are you? I'm just living the dream. I'll tell you what.

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I've heard so much about you through some different sources, and they say, don't meet your heroes, but today was worth it. Sandy, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I love what you're doing because you're kind of like me, like, doing a lot of different things, right?

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I mean, my resume is so packed with they're like, you did what? I'm like, oh, yeah, I did that. Oh, yeah, I did that. I did that. And I love meeting other people like that because it's like, you don't have to conform to what society says.

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Go to college, become an accountant, and do that for the rest of your life. No, right. Yeah. And that's been a big thing for me in my entire life. I've been lucky enough that every kind of move I make has been an increase in opportunity and income for me.

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But I've always known that when I'm going through my life, whatever I'm doing, I just want to be happy. If I'm happy doing it, if I like showing up to work, if I like that I don't have to wear a button up shirt or whatever it is, I just wanted to be happy. That's always been a central thesis for me. Well, and that's the key to success, really. I always say success doesn't create happiness.

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Happiness creates success. Okay, so just real quickly, you're the founder of Performance Windows. You have Bad Bet productions, and you also host leave It to Diver podcasts. I saw that on your Instagram. I'm like, that is so cool.

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Leave it to Deever. Does the younger generation even get that? Not even close. I'll tell people my age I'm 31, so I'm getting up there, but I'll tell people my age and older, and they think it's hilarious. I'll tell some of the 20 year olds who work for me, and they'll be like, oh, cool.

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Leave It To Beaver. They don't get it. Leave It To Beaver was like, one of the few shows I grew up with because there was only five to choose from, actually, any given day, and there was probably one to choose from. We had three channels. We had ABC, NBC, and probably CBS, because I think Fox wasn't even around back then.

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Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Honestly. It's like you said for me, I've got the hardcore Add and that I've got shiny object syndrome. And so I've got people in my life who will tell me that because I'm always an idea man. I said, I think this would be good.

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And the problem with having any success, especially in business, is then you start to think that, well, I'm King Midas and I've got the golden touch, and you really need those people in your life to kind of rein you in and say, calm down. Kujo yeah. So you have an interesting story I'd like you to share with the audience of how your life changed when you were 17. Can you talk about that? Yeah.

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So I grew up in Los Angeles. I grew up with my parents, made a lot of money. It was a privileged lifestyle. When I was 17, though, I was meeting a friend, my best friend, at the La. River, which isn't even a river, it's just a giant concrete basin.

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It was night, and I was looking at my phone, waiting for him, and I was walking, and I didn't realize I was up on this high wall. And I stepped right off. I actually fell 18ft and I landed on concrete and shattered my hip and broke my nose and just about damn near died. And from that moment, kind of going forward, things changed a lot for me in that I heard a quote just recently that said, man lives two lives, and the second one begins when he realizes that he only lives one. And so it's always been important for me to realize that I've got this one opportunity to do the things that will make me happy, to do the things that I want, to be a free man and to go out and live my life in a way that I'm going to be proud of when I'm laying down at the end of it.

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Oh, I love that. I love that because that's really what it's about. And for me, you talk about the shiny objects. I'm the same way. And we're going to talk about that in a second because I have some little tidbit of wisdom to share with you on that note.

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But the thing is, when you get to the end of your life, do you want to look back and say, oh, wow, boy, I wish I bought more handbags. I wish I bought more cars? No. You're going to look back and say, did I really achieve what I could achieve? Everything I'm doing today is for my older self.

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And I think most people start realizing that hopefully after they turn 50. Sometimes it's not till 60, 70 or 80, and it doesn't matter as long as you get there and you realize, I just started working out at the gym, and I'm a professional athlete. I know better. I just don't like to do it. And now I'm like, okay, if I want to play tennis, as in my mind, a 20 year old, right, that I think I am, I have to work out for injury prevention.

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So everything I'm doing now is for my older self because I want to still be playing tennis at 85, 90 years old. Right. And the thing is, it's like the old axiom that planting trees is the biggest, because what you're doing is you're providing shade for a future generation, a benefit that you'll never really see. Right. This is pulling it back even a little bit further, is that you're planting the trees so you can give yourself shade when you're 60, 70, 80, and it's getting that perspective.

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It changes everything. I love that you said that. Yeah. Because, I mean, that's really what it's all about. And back to looking at all the different shiny objects.

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I can tell energetically that you're really here to demonstrate that to everybody else, which is same for me. And we talked about this before I hit record. Society tells us one thing, but that's not true for every single person. For some people, they need to be on that trajectory, but a lot of us aren't. And you seem to be kind of the same kindred spirit as I am, where, yeah, oh, I think I'm going to do this now, and it's okay to pivot.

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It's okay to make those changes and have fun and be playful while we're doing it. I think that's been we talk whether it be spiritual gifts or just gifts in general. But one of my gifts that I've always had is that I just don't worry. I'm not worried about it.

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For me, I'm a degenerate gambler in the sense that I think almost every entrepreneur is a degenerate gambler. I've had this theory lately that it's not just shiny object syndrome, but when they do studies on gamblers, we get the dopamine hit by placing the bet, not by winning it. Right. And so when you get something that's really established, we're not placing the bet anymore. We want to place the next bet and the next bet because it's just so fun.

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And we assume that it's going to go well anyway. And if it doesn't, well, it's okay. It's onto the next one. But there's just something so thrilling about placing the next bet. It's just fun to see.

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Well, what if this happened and I could never constrain myself to doing one thing for the rest of my life? Yeah, I know. It would be really hard.

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So you have a window business talk about that because it seems obviously it's working out well, you're still doing it. So what is that about how it started? It's a door to door company, and it started out with me working for some other guy, and I was working at this tech job here in Utah. There's a large tech scene, they call it the Silicon Slopes here as opposed to Silicon Valley. And I would work that nine to five.

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And their culture was built on the snacks in the break room and a ping pong table, which to me what I've come to understand, that that's not culture, those are just toys, whatever it is. But what I would do is I'd go work at nine to five and kill myself to do it. And then I'd get off at 05:00 and I'd go drive over and from six to 07:00 p.m.. I'd go knock on doors and sell upgraded windows door to door. And it was so dark that I would have to have a lantern.

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I'd walk around like the crypt for knocking on doors. I would make more in the hour after work than I would in the eight, 9 hours that I was at work. And so when the pandemic hit, all of us got sent home. And so what I decided to do was just lean full on into this thing. And I had a buddy that was in that company with me.

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We just opened our own. It was time to just leap to my wife. So I'm married. And my wife's credit. Her biggest contribution to our success has always been that she believes in me.

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She knows that constraining me will just make me miserable. And so it's been four or five times that I've come home and told her, hey, I quit my job today, just so you know. And she wasn't always thrilled I've done it. One job I quit three days after a baby was born, and one job I quit two weeks before a different baby was born. Oh my goodness.

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But we leaped here in Utah. Things didn't shut down so much, but everybody was still home. So we started in a small office in Pleasant Grove, Utah, with five people. And through some just I mean, you never know what it's going to be like until you're in it. But through some real trials and tribulations, we've now been able to get we're now at eight offices.

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Our first year we were able to do 4 million in sales, which we were thrilled about wow. Yeah. The next year we were able to do 16, and then last year we were able to do 35 million in sales with 70 million on the calendar for this year. So what started in this small office has bloomed into something incredible. And what's amazed me the entire time is that I'm just some guy.

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I'm a big dumb ape. I know how to sell things. And so it's been such an incredible ride to see what some passion and desire and a little bit of elbow grease can change everything. I love it. So let's talk mindset because I love talking with entrepreneurs because as you know, success is 80% mindset, 20% tactics.

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Because if your head's not in the game, nothing's going to happen. And most businesses fail because of that. So what do you attribute your success to and keeping your head in the game long enough to have 70 million on the books for this year? I mean, that's astounding yeah, well, what. I would say for sure, people talk about burn the ships, right?

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But for me, I was lucky enough that I was so broke that I didn't have any ships to burn. I had to swim to the island. So I was lucky enough that I wasn't really it was a leap without leaving too much behind. But the biggest thing there's a book have you ever heard of Atomic Habits? James Clear?

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Vaguely. Great book. Great book. And what it talks about, one of his concepts is he says that the best bodybuilders, the best athletes are the ones that do best with the boredom of working out. Because when you first go to the gym, when you first do a new lift or get some results, it's exciting.

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But that's not how you become the best that you could become the best by being so rote and routine and over and over and over again showing up every day. That's how you separate yourself from the pack. And I think too often with entrepreneurs, and I've fallen victim to this in my path. I'm a serial failed entrepreneur. It's just that I had one go.

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But what I've seen is that becoming okay with the boredom of the routine and knowing that you're working towards something that's been the biggest contributor is that just understanding that maybe it's not fun and exciting, but it is moving the lever. Yeah, right. And just making sure that you're consistently taking action. Because I think a lot of times people, they tend to work on things and same thing. I've been guilty of that myself.

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Well, it's more fun to do this, but is that adding to the bottom line financially, I think another big thing. For me, I've got a business partner with Performance Windows, and having a business partner is hard. Right. I'm married and I've got a business partner. And I'd say, well, some days one's worse than the other.

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But being a business partner is incredibly difficult. Because you've got two people who have equal pride and ownership in this company, two people with very strong opinions, two successful people by you both doing that thing. But one of my biggest contributors to my success, it doesn't necessarily need to be a business partner, but it is that I know what I don't know, and I'm not going to sit here and try and yeah, I could learn accounting, but why? There's people who like accounting. I'll put them in with me.

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Right. So it's being able to have the humility to know that what I'm really good at and the things that I could get better at and improve on. But also there's not just ROI, but it's rot a return on my time. And if I want to put the time to learn it, if it's really going to pay me back on that. Yeah.

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I mean, so many people, really great business leaders in the world who I think Steve Jobs even said this, you hire people that are smarter than you.

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Right. That's a big thing. Yeah, that's been a big contributor for me. And because of that, to my core, I'm a sales guy. I take a lot of pride in that.

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But by that nature, I'm a people guy. And so the people that work for me and now we're in the hundreds with performance windows. I relate most to the door knocker. Right. Because we've got doorknockers, we've got closers, we've got market owners and VPs of sale.

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I relate most to the door knocker because I know that my closers are their bills are going to be paid, no problem. Market owners and VPs. But I've been a scared kid standing on the corner on the day before rent is due. And I relate with that person the most because I can still have that connection with what would seemingly be the lowest rung on the ladder. It flows all the way up.

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Me being able to stay connected to everybody in the organization has made me still love coming into work every day. Nice. Let's shift gears a bit and talk about your Bad Bet Productions. Can you tell the audience what that is? Because that seems I really like the concept of it.

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So Bad Bet Productions is a media company, so I just started a podcast. You mentioned the Leave It to Diver podcast as a networking tool for me. I can talk anybody's ear off, but I have a hard time with the intro. I have a hard time walking up and saying, hi, I'm Kyle. This is what I do.

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X-Y-Z. So podcasting became a tool, became a tool for me to talk to these amazing people who I would never sit in a room with otherwise. But because they have a platform to share their story, they're happy to come in. But because I already had all the equipment, the mics, the cameras, the people shooting it, it developed into something of a media company, right? And the name Bad Bet actually comes from after one of my failed ventures years ago, I had gone back home, I was talking to my father.

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I told him, I said, man, the problem is I keep betting on myself and I've come to realize that that's a bad bet. And he said, well, you're right. And he wasn't saying because he was saying because at that time I was saying I was speaking a lot. I was talking a lot, but not doing as much as I thought I was. I was getting mental reps, but not actually actionizing them like you were talking about.

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And that kind of changed things for me always. But at that moment, who I esteemed myself as this entrepreneur, I'd come to the realization that betting on myself was a bad bet. So that's why that's called that. But the media company, what it is, is basically I see so many businesses that either they're shooting stuff on their phone or they've got videographers who are coming in and charging $10,000 for not very much content or some kind of routine content. And so what I did was I put together a social media content company where we'll come in and we'll shoot for a day, right?

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We'll do some R and D beforehand and we'll develop a strategy and do these things. But we'll come in and shoot for 6 hours. Then we provide a month or two months worth of content with a calendar that they're dropping that you drop this on this day. So it takes all the thinking out of it for the business owner that has to focus on the business, they're not having to do any thinking, drop this and it gives them the results that they want. That's incredible.

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I love that. So is that just local? You're doing that locally in Utah? Yeah. So it's Utah based.

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It's a newer venture. The beautiful thing about having performance windows is that it allows me to lose money all over the place, other places. So we've been able to do Bad Bet, right, or we've got the right team in place. My team. I've got a guy, his name is Diego now, he just moved up from Columbia.

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He's a filmmaker, a genuine filmmaker who's done marketing but real movies and all these different things. And now I've brought him onto the team. What I wanted to do from the beginning was do it right so that I've got all the pieces in place. So now we're getting that going. It's now starting to sell and do those things.

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We will eventually expand out of Utah, but it is currently in Utah. That's great. That's great. All right, last thing your podcast. Leave it to Deever.

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So for those of you who are too young to remember the TV show Leave It to Beaver, he was this quirky little kid and always had little adventures and everything. So what is your audience for your podcast and what type of people are you speaking with? So, for me, with the podcast, it's always early on, I called it Roganesque, in that I like having people on. I'm in awe of people who have done amazing things, who do amazing things. I don't care if you're a world championship pogo stick jumper.

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It's just to me that somebody can find something, start at zero and become incredible at something has always been so fascinating to me. Right. And what I've come to realize, I've had CEOs of very large companies, I've had NFL players, I had the doctor who delivered my baby come in, which was the first time I'd ever been in the room with a guy who had also seen my wife's Hoohah. But to me, it's so incredible. And what I've come to realize is that all these people who have done incredible things, it's just some guy or just some girl, they're just some person who decided to do something and they did.

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And that's been really exhilarating for me because I'm just some guy. And if just some regular person can do these incredible things, then so can I. And so that's really what it is. I had these people. I don't care the lane, just by nature of what I do, I get a lot of business people in.

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But I just had Kevin Ferriss, who was consistently in the top three, top five for World's Strongest Man. He's going and competing against these guys because to me, I love being in the room with greatness in any form. I love being expert in any form because it's just so exciting to know I could do that. I love everything you just said because it comes down to that limiting belief when people say, well, why me? Right?

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Well, why not you? And that's your vibe. You're like, of course, if they can do it, I can do it too. You are an amazing man. You're only 31 years old.

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I'm so excited to connect with you because you've got so much more ahead of you. Thank you. And I will certainly be here cheering you on. So thank you so much. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with the audience today before we wrap it up?

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Sandy? For me, I always get uncomfortable when people pay me compliments, but I talk with a lot of people and honestly, your vibe and your aura and your energy is as I'm sure people who listen to know, it's infectious. And just seeing your ability to light up a room and get conversation going, honestly, you're so impressive. Thank you, Kyle. Thank you.

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Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

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I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that you're lives are filled with peace, joy and happiness. Take care, everyone.