20 questions with Kyle Eschenroeder
Taking action is important to Kyle Eschenroeder.
At a young age, his actions led him to success within the stock market. Then he managed virtual communities at Affluence.org and Grooveshark.com before taking a year off to "explore the crazy world we are in." He has also helped aspiring entrepreneurs take the necessary actions required for success.
Hell... he has, literally, written a book on taking action.
He's also a poet, he enjoys meditation and he spent one week of his life watching Pulp Fiction an absurd amount of times.
Steemit community, allow me to introduce you to Kyle.
20 questions with Kyle Eschenroeder
1 - How would you describe yourself in one sentence?
Kyle - Stumbling.
2 - I understand you were introduced to the stock market at a young age. How did you discover it, and how long did it take you to start making money?
Kyle - I was brainwashed to be obsessed with money really young, so I knew about Warren Buffett and just assumed that was the way to go. I "paper" traded at least a full year before I started using real money–and I was immediately making and losing money from then on out.
3 - Why did you eventually decide to leave day trading?
Kyle - There's no value creation. So you're playing a zero sum game against people who are willing to spend a billion dollars to get a slightly faster cable. I was on my phone staring at charts all day, I was checking prices in the middle of movies with friends, it was all-consuming. I decided to try other things: and I've liked those other things more.
4 - Do you believe the education system is flawed?
Kyle - Massively flawed. (And it will always be flawed; anything that big has to be.) It's a rip-off for a lot of kids. I wrote a book about how to win without degrees because the value of degrees are falling while their cost is rising like crazy.
The system is broken in a lot of ways, but it's kind of tired to whine about it or generalize too much. College is still great for a lot of kids, especially for majors where you need certification. If a kid wants to go and not get into debt I think it's a good move.
5 - What kind of work did you do at Affluence.org and Grooveshark.com?
Kyle - A lot of community building mixed in with other random stuff.
6 - I read that you took a year off after your stint with Grooveshark. Where did you go? What did you do?
Kyle - I traveled a bunch. The best trip was an extended, solo road trip around the country. I had some of the most wild experiences just wandering around. From Austin to San Diego I didn't use a GPS, just my compass. I stayed in strangers' homes. I drove under the speed limit.
I read philosophy for the first time in my life. Not Ayn Rand or New Age stuff, but the good stuff. I wrote poems. I did a 10 day silent meditation retreat. I did yoga every day for six months. I wrote a couple screenplays. I read a bunch of fiction. I just explored this crazy world we are in. I had spent the rest of my life with such a narrow focus I had no idea what I was missing out on.
7 - Where is one place that you've not yet traveled, that is on the top of your list to visit?
Kyle - I satisfied my travel bug pretty good. Right now I've got an awesome place in Maine with my girlfriend and we're watching the leaves change color: it feels like a travel destination!
I've always wanted to see Dubai, though. So maybe there.
8 - The Art of Manliness has added your book, Meditations on the Wisdom of Action, to their site. Why are you passionate about the subject of taking action? What can readers expect to learn from your new book?
Kyle - I'm so passionate about taking action because I've gone through large parts of life frustrated by inaction. I realized that a lot of times the reason I didn't take action is because I didn't appreciate what action meant. I looked as closely as I could at what happens when we take action and the new perspective that I found made it much easier to take action. The common types of resistance like overthinking and fear began losing power.
People have been loving it–many even printing it out–so we're going to be releasing a beautiful physical copy in the next couple months. If you download the PDF (and you should, it's beautiful) I'll let you know when it's available.
The book is a compilation of short sections that are designed to move you to powerful action. Take some time to check a few out if you're feeling like you've been avoiding action in any part of your life.
9 - What is your favorite thing about working with entrepreneurs?
Kyle - Seeing people transform from scared, unsure, and sometimes ashamed about their lives to being confident, excited, and proud to be who they want to be for their families.
10 - In your opinion, what does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?
Kyle - Humility and grit. Add self-reliance and you level up.
"Entrepreneur" covers way too many people now. So I hesitate to generalize a lot here: different types of entrepreneurs take different traits. And you'll find the best entrepreneurs in the world with wildly conflicting traits. Jobs and Gates were totally different, and Buffett is different than Gates, and Musk is different than any of them.
One thing I might add here is that people say you need to be passionate and that's just not true. The most passionate people that came through our ecommerce course were the first to fail. They came in with stupid goals they just came up with after watching some Tony Robbins video and then they quit a week or two in because they got bored looking for profitable products. The ones who kicked ass were willing to try what we suggested and keep trying it until it worked–and the best of them found their own ways to do things too.
11 - Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Kyle - Looking back and thinking, "Well, this isn't where I thought I'd be."
But I'll probably be writing something, too.
12 - You get to have dinner with three people, living or dead. Who are you eating with?
Kyle - Aristotle would be super interesting to talk to. It'd be interesting to get a glimpse into how he generated so many (relatively) good ideas across so many areas.
Teddy Roosevelt because I want to know about this wild energy everybody talks about with him.
I want to say Bob Dylan, but I think I'd rather just have him playing music in the back–he'd be too obtuse to actually talk to. (I'm talking about young, folk-aged Dylan.)
So let's do Cleopatra as the third. Maybe we could learn something weird about Caesar too.
13 - Who is your favorite author?
Kyle - It changes maybe more often than it should, but right now Neal Stephenson is blowing me away. His book Snow Crash inspired Google Earth and I'm fairly certain Diamond Age is inspiring some new AI educational stuff.
14 - What is your favorite quote?
Kyle - I'm a quote hound so this is impossible for me. Right now I'm writing an article based on Emerson's Self-Reliance and this bit from that has to be in my top 10:
"There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide."
15 - What type of poems do/did you write? Where can people find these?
Kyle - Really bad, playful ones. The goal is always either to have the reader (a) like life a little more or (b) point at that thing we can never quite grasp.
I have a book of them called Existentially Fucked that you can get on Amazon.
16 - What's your drink of choice?
Kyle - I've been drinking bourbon with a cube. Specifically from Split Rock Distilling, a local distillery, it's freaking delicious.
But it's pumpkin season, so I've been cycling through some pumpkin beers: Dogfish Head Punkin Ale is a winner.
17 - You only get to listen to only one song for the rest of your life. What song do you choose?
Kyle - Oh man, I want to say Bob Dylan's "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" but with that kind of repetition I think it's got to be instrumental.
Maybe Bach's "Ave Maria?" But that would put me to bed after a while. Screw it, I'm saying Jay-Z's "On to the Next One."
18 - During your year off, you dove deep into yoga and meditation. Are these elements still part of your everyday life? Why are they important?
Kyle - Yes! Well, not yoga, but meditation is. I don't sit everyday, but I practice mindfulness. They're important because the less I do them, the more I screw things up in life. Our life is made up of our attention and mindfulness is one of the best ways to train ourselves to control where we direct our attention. There are few practices with higher ROI.
19 - Describe your perfect day.
Kyle - I wake up with the sun, drink tea, read, write, work out, write some more, talk to a friend, go do something outside, read, watch a movie, go to bed. That's the gist of it anyway.
20 - What is one thing very few people know about you?
Kyle - Very few people know anything about me, but only a couple know that I've watched Pulp Fiction twelve times in one week.
It was my pleasure to feature Kyle for my twentieth "20 questions" interview!
As always, thanks to all of you for taking the time to read.
Who would you like to see me throw 20 questions at? Drop me a comment below and I'll work on setting up the interview.
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