SOAL 15
SOAL 35: True Passion with Balance

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Life is all about creating a healthy balance and Kyle Wolverton is doing just that. Kyle has always grown up around music, with an extremely musical family and a love for the gospel and jazz sound. Now he is a successful businessman at Sweet River Trading Company, a recording artist, and the owner of Smooth Ride Records. Being successful in life requires a lot of self-discipline, hard work, and a little bit of risk-taking! Kyle proves that keeping a positive mindset and envisioning your end goal is so important to obtaining your biggest dreams in life. Never give up what you see yourself doing! 

I never turned my back on what I really wanted to do.

I think when you put it off and don’t have balance but rather it’s all on one side, hoping to change the channel and go back to the other side someday, they may not be there.

I always kept my foot in my true passion while doing what I love, which is creating and building a business.

You’ll Learn

  • Create a balance between work life and your passions.
  • Never turn your back on what you really want to do in life.
  • Things don’t just happen on their own, you have to have determination and self-discipline.
  • Keep the positivity, no matter what!

Resources

Transcript

Alicia:

Hello and welcome to Soul of a Leader podcast, where we ignite soulful conversations with leaders. On today’s episode, Dr. Alicia and Dr. Eileen sit with Kyle Wolverton to discuss true passion with balance.

 

Eileen:

Hello, and welcome to Soul of a Leader, today we have Kyle Wolverton, who is the Chief Strategic Officer at Sweet River Trading Company and also at Smooth Ride Records as the owner and operator. So welcome, Kyle.

 

Alicia:

Welcome Kyle.

 

Kyle:

Thank you, happy to be here. Yeah. Thank you guys.

 

Alicia:

Yeah, we’re excited to hear you talk more about Smooth, that music that you make, we love music.

 

Eileen:

And Kyle did we miss anything? Did you want to add anything to, especially to Smooth Ride Records, we’d love to hear a little bit more about that.

 

Kyle:

I think you nailed it. I live two lives which is sometimes necessary in music these days, to keep the bills paid I’ve always been involved in business in one way or the other, but my true passion I would say is really the music side of things. And after many years of playing in a bunch of different bands with different people, I decided to do my own thing when I moved to Los Angeles about 20 years ago and started pulling from some of the folks that I performed with to form a group that we’re now calling The West Side Monsters on the second album coming out this year, but we put our first album out on our own label and we call it Smooth Ride Records and had pretty good success with it. And it’s been a lot of fun recording that album. And now just wrapping up a second one.

 

Alicia:

Wow. So I heard something that was very key and we use a lot of our value cards for clients and you talked about passion and so let’s talk a little bit more about what is that type of passion that you need to really to be in a creative space when it comes to music and obviously creating your own label with that. So what was it that inspired you and gave you the passion to do it?

 

Kyle:

Well, I think I was very, very lucky because my father was an excellent saxophone player, still is, he still plays, he’s up in Seattle. And I grew up with, before I could talk, I heard music. At a very young age I heard my dad playing at night. He was a PE teacher by day, but he played saxophone really well and just hearing him playing, mom was a big music fan as well as the record player, whether it was Johnny Mathis or Elvis or Sam Cooke or the Neville Brothers, Aaron Neville, actually, she has a crush on him to this day, which is, whatever she beats around, but she likes that high voice, I guess.

 

Kyle:

And so I grew up listening to music as I fell asleep every night. So by the time I was, fifth, sixth grade, everybody wants to be like their dad. So you find yourself with an instrument in your hands and it’s a lot of fun, not necessarily the practicing as much initially, but once you get past that speed bump of realizing, “Hey, this is actually starting to sound okay and it’s fun,” that’s the big hurdle for kids, I think. And once I got past that, it’s always been just so much fun to try to improve and create new sounds and create music that makes people tap their toe.

 

Eileen:

Thank you for sharing that and I read an article on you in the Seattle Times, and it’s shared that you attended Christian schools where you came up playing gospel music and swing band gigs with your dad. So, as you shared listening when you’re a younger and you’re maybe your education and your Christian influence, is there anything that helped at that passion as you were growing and learning more in your life?

 

Kyle:

I think so. I think the church is a really good environment for learning performance in a very young age. It’s a stage where you get the chance to perform and prepare for something and you get the butterflies and know what it feels like to be in front of 500/600 people when you’re 10, 12 years old. I think that was a good headstart and just being around music, that’s a big part of religion, I think that the praise aspect of things and the energy that goes along with that, I think that was really key early on.

 

Kyle:

And just the gospel sound, I’ve always been drawn to it, just the way it flows it’s somewhere between blues and folk, I guess you could say. And I just have always liked the blues sound and I think that comes from my roots in gospel. So I think that was pretty key. My father would write music out for, my younger brother Joel, he plays sax as well. So we were the Wolverton Trio and he would write out these three-part harmonies, that kind of sound like they were from the 1920s. It was kind of fun to play that old, tiny sounding music, but it always worked and it was a lot of fun to play with the family growing up in church.

 

Alicia:

Well, so it sounds like you had that family connection with growing up and building music and singing it. So what would you say was the most inspiring moment of your creativity point, what happened? When did you really catch on that maybe I can hear the sound of it and know how to create music or write music or know how to bring all the elements of just being creative. Did you get it at 10? Because you started so early in your life listening to music and even before you were talking, so that’s pretty impressive. And so it was embedded in you at that point, but when was that key moment that you were able to really touch on the creativity side of how to write it or the instruments and how to connect it all together?

 

Kyle:

That’s a great question. I don’t know if there was an exact epiphany when it came to the creativity side, because I think that was sort of an amalgamation over time where I realized, “Hey, I have something a little bit different.” I think there were some moments of realization. I remember one specific moment where I got the bug for wanting to entertain and take it to the next level beyond playing the trios in church and special music. It was for whatever reason I remember this, I was in sixth grade and Huey Lewis and the News was a really popular band at the time. And they had a lot of saxophone parts in there and I would, being in Seattle, it rained literally nine months of the year.

 

Kyle:

So if you weren’t at the gym playing basketball, you were doing something indoors and for me it was practicing my saxophone. So I would record a song from the radio, in this case Huey Lewis and the News in sixth grade and I would get it on cassette and I have my little earpiece and I would rewind and figure out, “Okay, what was that first note he played? What was the second, what was the third?” And I’d string them together to where I finally could learn the whole solo, end to end.

 

Alicia:

Wow.

 

Kyle:

And I remember being in the gym and for some reason there was a microphone I think they were going to have a gymnastic show or something where the audio visual guys were there. And I popped my little cassette tape in and it was that Huey Lewis song. I think I got in trouble because it was a Christian school and I don’t think that was allowed at that point, but that’s another story.

 

Kyle:

But anyway, it came on and they held the microphone up and I played it note for note. And I remember thinking, “Man, that was really cool,” just to see how excited everybody got. And that was a different kind of a level to where, “Hey, I can learn this stuff.” So that’s when I went back and really started digging in, Grover Washington, Jr, if you’ve ever heard of him.

 

Alicia:

Oh yes.

 

Kyle:

He’s sort of the first in my mind crossover where he combined, R&B soul seamlessly with instrumental music, without lyric.

 

Alicia:

Yeah.

 

Kyle:

And I wasn’t a great singer. And so I thought, “Well, what if I can do some melodic stuff?” And so I would do the same thing once I figured that technique out where I would rewind, play, rewind, play, rewind, play. And I figured out that I could pretty quickly develop my ear, which I always teach young kids. That’s a great way to do it is-

 

Alicia:

Yeah.

 

Kyle:

…take something that you really like the sound of and emulate it over and over and over, the tone, the breathing, the sound, get it to where you can do it end to end. And then that will start to shine through in your playing. So I think once I figured out that’s a really long answer, but that I had the ability to listen to a certain passage, downloaded into my mind, shed it, learn to play it. That’s kind of how things were from junior high school through college, with the different bands that I started perform and perform around town and around in college.

 

Kyle:

And then that’s when I think at that point, you sort of say, “Okay, I need to break out and start creating my own music.” And that’s when we start writing melodies. And I think that all kind of came together when I finally moved to LA around a lot of like-minded people here about 15 years ago, that all kind of were in the same creative spot at the same time saying, “We’ve always been side men playing with other people, let’s form our own group here-

 

Alicia:

Wow.

 

Kyle:

…and create our own melodies” that are very similar to the music that we heard growing up and there’s similarities, certainly you can see the influences, but none the less, it was our own sound.

 

Eileen:

And Kyle what I heard is, a lot of people ask, “Oh how did you do this? Or how did you get there?” And what I heard is, it takes hard work, right? And there was self-discipline, there was open to new opportunities, there was chances to take risks. So if you would look at your values and how you developed from the time you started listening to your ear to where you are now, and you have West Side Monsters, right? And you’ve had, successful soul [inaudible 00:10:47], you’re out on Amazon, you’re on YouTube, you’re everywhere, you have your own CDs. What was the path there that kept you going with your values and alignment?

 

Kyle:

Well, I think what it was, my whole life, I always had a dream kind of like a kid that plays sports has a dream of taking the final shot in the championship game or making it to the NBA or making it to major league baseball. For me I always had the dream, “Boy, I just want to someday get on the radio. I’d love to have a band that can go play the jazz festivals around the country.” And it was always a very clear dream because growing up, in Seattle there was a place called the Ste. Michelle Winery and we would hear these incredible jazz groups come through in the summer. And it was just so memorable and going to Lake Union Cafe or Dimitrio’s Jazz Alley, it wasn’t a dream, it was really a vision. I’d seen it so many times before and I wanted to make that happen one way or the other.

 

Kyle:

And I think even though, I didn’t go the traditional path, which is going all the way through music school and going on tour with someone else, getting your chops up, making your name there, earning your living that way, and then making the transition to a solo career. I always kept a business, I had a business degree and I did it kind of the reverse. I went all the way through college and got my business degree, always having different companies, usually my own that I had the flexibility-

 

Alicia:

Right.

 

Kyle:

…to set my own hours and have projects so that I never had to say completely, “I’m out of music.” I always kept my foot in my true passion while doing what I love, which is creating and building a business. I never turned my back on what I really wanted to do. And I was fortunate enough to come to LA here where the guys I grew up listening to many of them, [Brad and Fields 00:00:12:50], Abraham Laboriel Sr, the bass player, Joey Heredia, one of the greatest jazz drummers. These guys all live within 15 miles of where I am.

 

Alicia:

Oh wow.

 

Eileen:

Wow.

 

Kyle:

And we all start to perform in some of the same pop bands. When those guys who do it 365 a year, when they’re not on tour, we get together, my producer and keyboard player, Joe Navarro, we became very good friends and he would start pulling these guys in. So I literally would go work my shift as a sales guy, during those years when we were doing the album and I’d go straight to North Hollywood to the studio for rehearsal or recording or whatever it would be. And when it came time during the summer to do the festival circuit, it was just kind of known Kyle will be taking calls from the road. And I think that that was what was unique and I was able to not give up my dream. I chose a career path that it gave me the flexibility to still be involved with music, if that makes sense.

 

Alicia:

Oh, absolutely. And a lot of that, that you talked about is just having enough courage to understand the path that you want to go down and also just really believing in yourself. Another part I want to ask you about is how does your faith fit in with all of this? Because I can hear a lot of that, but I want you to kind of talk about it so the listeners will understand, yes, it is hard work, yes it is a process and yes, you had a plan and you did what you love, but where does your faith fit in with all of this?

 

Kyle:

I think wherever you draw your faith from, having the positivity, no matter what, to think about the end goal that you’re shooting for, or the path that you want to be on and to have the faith and the belief that you can, with all of your resources, whether it’s your spirituality or your affirmations, whatever your positive mindset is to call it into reality. I think that’s really important. Things don’t just happen on their own, especially when we get busy, if you are straddling the line between, and I would say this to a lot of artists that are, there’s so many talented people out there that just don’t have enough hours in the day to really buffer their craft. I think you have to, to your point, have the faith and the understanding that I may not be doing this 24/7, but as long as I have some of what I’ve gotten to take towards that goal, while still doing what needs to be done, to keep the lights on, hopefully that isn’t something that makes you miserable.

 

Kyle:

Hopefully you enjoy your day job and something you enjoy, but it facilitates a way for you to get through to what you have. I think just having the faith and the understanding that, “Hey, if I keep on this path, I’m going to end up where I need to be.” I think that’s really important because there are times where there just aren’t enough hours in the day. You may not get to that project you’ve been wanting to get to. So it’s sort of an up and down, there’s definitely patches where it’s frustrating that you don’t have enough hours to do what you want to do.

 

Eileen:

Well and with that, Kyle, you are running a business, Sweet River Trading. You’re using, as I heard, some of your creativity from your passion into your business life. And also you’re serving the world with what your products about-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

And coming up with ideas like masks and hand sanitizers and disinfecting wipes to help humans and people protect each other.

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

So can you tell me how you transferred from your medical device industry, Bright Light, into this and any creativity or ideas that helps supported you from your music to this?

 

Kyle:

Sure. Yeah. That was my day job and still is for the last five years or so, I started my own distributorship here. I used to work for different medical companies selling primarily to the operating room, different devices and supplies. And when the pandemic hit, I started getting calls from different people that said, “Hey, Kyle can you help me find gloves? Can you help me find N95 masks, we don’t have enough for this hospital or for this nursing home, we need this, we don’t have hand sanitizers.” So a couple of my other friends that have worked in a similar space, we started talking and found that, “Hey, this is a real thing where there’s a lot going on in the space where people don’t know, are they getting a high quality product?” There’s a lot of stuff that’s coming in from China that is questionable at best.

 

Kyle:

FDA wants to have these products come in because we need them, there’s not enough to meet the demand domestically. So we’ve got to do it. But you hear about these products coming from Mexico that literally have poison in a hand sanitizer or masks that are counterfeit, that don’t even really keep all the microbes out that are harmful. So a little by little, we started dabbling here and there just helping connect the dots, but we were having fun doing it and seeing us help people and so little by little, we created a company, we call it Sweet River Trading Company and our slogan is “for a cleaner world.” And we have a lot of big plans, we’re just getting started.

 

Kyle:

But I’d say the neat thing about that product is we’re just having a lot of fun with… We’re ready to launch our complete line here very shortly-

 

Alicia:

Great.

 

Kyle:

…of our hand sanitizers that are going to have natural elements to them where they’re not just straight alcohol and glycerin but they’re going to have one of them, for example, has five essential oils in there. So you have oils that will calm you, will actually moisturize your skin rather than drying it out. Everything from, clove, eucalyptus, we have a lavender, we have one with natural coconut and vanilla.

 

Alicia:

Oh wow.

 

Kyle:

And I don’t know if I’m supposed to say it yet, but we’re going to be the first ones out there who have a completely organic line of hand sanitizers. So a lot of people like to know that everything they’re using, especially when it can absorb into your skin, like an alcohol will, is completely organic, and we’ll be launching that line as well. So we’re doing some fun things with that.

 

Kyle:

And our plan long term, when we get to the point where we have some money to give back right now, it’s all going out, to treat all the labels and marketing packaging and making sure our formulas are correct.

 

Alicia:

Right.

 

Kyle:

But very soon, we’re going to be in a position where we will be able to give back and that’s where our slogan for a cleaner world comes from in that we intend to, rather than spend all our money on online Facebook advertising, elevating ads on Amazon and radio spots, we prefer to take a percentage of that and give it back to countries or communities that need help with sanitation, whether it’s cleaner water systems, maybe funding to help dig a well in a town that doesn’t have access to clean water, maybe it’s education around hand sanitation, maybe it’s donating products.

 

Kyle:

So we’re going to, we’re planning to let people know, “Hey, a percentage of what’s coming in for this is going back to help create a cleaner world, as well as for your world to be a cleaner place, hopefully with a very high end product.” So we’re having a ball developing this product line, it’s not rocket science, but it’s pretty easy to stand out if you pick the right ingredients and source from the right places. So we’re made down in Tyler, Texas right in the middle of the country, made in the good old USA and we partnered with a company called Lone Star Botanicals who makes incredible herbal teas, charcoal masks, all types of skin treatments that are all organic and spirulina to help boost the immune system. So we’re going to do a lot of co-branding with them on our websites that are about to launch where you can come in there and make sure you’re staying clean, but you’re also staying clean on the inside with all the immunity boosting supplements that we will have.

 

Alicia:

I’m so impressed. And my next question was going to be like, how are you making a difference in others’ lives? And I can see you guys have already thought about it. So this is all-

 

Kyle:

Yeah.

 

Alicia:

…good stuff.

 

Kyle:

Yeah.

 

Eileen:

And it’s not only in other lives, it’s inside and outside.

 

Alicia:

Yeah.

 

Eileen:

So that was great.

 

Alicia:

Yeah.

 

Kyle:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

 

Alicia:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s always important to kind know how to pivot and it sounds like you guys understood what that meant in a time that we’re all dealing with COVID and yes everyone was looking for wipes and sprays and it was always a question, what is this that I’m putting on? And so I gravitated to something more natural in any moment of looking for because you just want to be very cautious of what that product is. And so I’m so happy to hear that you guys are really having that as the forefront of your development of your product.

 

Kyle:

Yeah. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and the fun part, the naming of the products, the chai mist, the river mist scent, it’s fun to come up with the slogans and the colors and the logo. That’s just to me, I always say the most fun job in the world would be naming yachts, you see these awesome names of yachts. I think that would be a really fun job. And this was about as close as it comes to that for me is naming products and coming up with labels and ingredients, it’s just a hoot.

 

Alicia:

Yes that’s the fun stuff.

 

Kyle:

Yep. Yep.

 

Eileen:

It’s the creativity-

 

Alicia:

Yeah.

 

Eileen:

…that you can use with all the aroma therapy and all that.

 

Alicia:

Yeah.

 

Eileen:

And the different smells.

 

Kyle:

Yeah.

 

Eileen:

The different plants that are put in it.

 

Kyle:

Yeah, Yeah.

 

Alicia:

Yeah, Yeah. And the other thing is, you know in your heart the passion that is going behind it and how you’re helping people, you know exactly the ingredients that’s in there because you’re putting it in there.

 

Kyle:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Alicia:

Yeah, yeah.

 

Kyle:

Yep that’s the [inaudible 00:22:59].

 

Alicia:

Yeah.

 

Eileen:

Well Kyle-

 

Kyle:

We’ll have some samples for you guys real soon there in the studio. We’ll make sure you guys have a very pleasant smelling studio with everyone with exceptionally clean hands.

 

Eileen:

Wonderful. Where can people find this product? Are you in stores? Are you on your website? Where can they find it?

 

Kyle:

Yeah, we will be launching November 1st, it’ll be on our website and we will be up on our Amazon store that’s co-branded with Lone Star Botanicals. So all those wonderful supplements and teas and masks will be there as well. Skin masks for exfoliating and things like that. We also have some really nice hand wipes, which are popular in the schools and in some of the long-term care facilities. So that will be up on our sweetriver.com website and all over Amazon and we’ll be on a lot of shelves as well. Our wipes are all over, for some reason we’re very popular back East, we have some big distributors, all the ShopRite stores back East have our alcohol hand wipes as well, the Sweet River Brand. So hopefully it’ll be pretty easy to find us.

 

Eileen:

Great. Thank you so much for sharing that. So if you’re on the East Coast, go to ShopRite, pick up a couple packages of the wipes.

 

Alicia:

That’s right.

 

Kyle:

Yep.

 

Eileen:

So Kyle this has been a wonderful conversation. We’ve heard a wonderful journey and how you are contributing with your soul to other people in their lives. So now what we’d like to do is ask you to leave some words of wisdom as we always do, with us and our listeners that you would like to share.

 

Kyle:

I would say for me, what keeps me sane and I think is healthy, people talk about balance in life and I know it’s a word that gets thrown around quite a bit, but I think you really have to think about what that means and not just talk about it. I mean it’s more than going to work and coming home and going for a walk or watching your favorite TV show. And for me, it really is a balance between this other life that I think I have if there was another reality where I’m a musician full-time and I’m creating music and I’m making people smile and dance and that, I can’t let that side of me die because I know that’s in there and I enjoy my day job and I certainly don’t regret it.

 

Kyle:

And I think that’s the key for people. Everybody has something that they really, if they’re honest with themselves, really enjoy and I think a lot of people sweep that under the rug because they say, “Well, I got a family now, I’ve got kids, I’ve got mouths to feed, I’ve got bills to pay.” I think it’s really important to make time for that balance, to have that side of you that feeds a whole bunch of your brain that lights up when that stuff’s going on, not just focus on this and say, “Someday, I’ll get to a point where I can start doing those things again.” I think when you put it off and don’t have balance but rather it’s all on one side, hoping to change the channel and go back to the other side someday, they may not be there.

 

Kyle:

So I think having balance and never giving up on what you see yourself doing, not saying you have to be in the world series, but if you enjoy playing baseball then make time to go hit a baseball. I guess that would be what I would say. That’s what has got me through a lot of times where I maybe wished I was just playing music. I remind myself, “Hey, it’s still there. I can still do it.”

 

Alicia:

Right.

 

Kyle:

And I have that balance between work life and my passion.

 

Alicia:

You knocked that out of the park.

 

Eileen:

Yes, great words of wisdom. It’s so hard. I mean-

 

Alicia:

Yeah, yeah.

 

Eileen:

…following your passion and giving that joy and it makes your heart beat, the time flies-

 

Alicia:

Yes.

 

Eileen:

…you’re in a flow, you don’t even realize it.

 

Kyle:

Yeah.

 

Eileen:

That’s what we all need to keep our heart going for the other days.

 

Alicia:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Eileen:

I think so. I think so.

 

Alicia:

Yeah.

 

Eileen:

I think so.

 

Alicia:

Yeah. And I like one point before we close out, because this has all been great, Kyle, we certainly appreciate all your words. It’s you have to create the balance and it’s whatever it means to you as far as what balance is. And so you just, like I said, I’m serious, you knocked that out of the park. [crosstalk 00:27:34] You can still do your music because you love it. You love sales and creating business deals and creating a business and something that, and really you’re giving back because you’re making sure that the product that you’re developing means something, and it won’t do harm to people. So I love it. So thank you.

 

Kyle:

Yeah, I appreciate that.

 

Eileen:

Thank you so much. And what I heard is, when you play music, you want people to dance and be joyful.

 

Alicia:

Oh yes.

 

Eileen:

And what was so neat, Kyle is that flow of the soulful leader, which we call authentic servant and spiritual is all there. It’s in your day job by you’re creating and helping people. And it’s in your passion job that you keep the balance with. So we so grateful that you’ve come on Soul of a Leader because you’ve demonstrated it perfectly. Thank you so much, Kyle.

 

Kyle:

Thank you for all the great questions you made me do a little reflecting and thinking and keep myself on my path. So thank you so much for the time. It was really nice to meet you guys, and hopefully we can talk again.

 

Eileen:

Thank you for joining us on Soul of a Leader podcast. We are igniting a new way of leading with your soul and interviewing ordinary people with extraordinary impact. Thank you for listening to the stories of our leaders who will help and guide you on your leadership journey. For more information on our podcast, please visit our website at wwwsoulofaleader.com. Thank you for listening.

 

With Dr. Eileen & Dr. Alicia

Conversations with ordinary people, with extraordinary impact on strategies, success stories, spirituality and leadership.

With Dr. Eileen & Dr. Alicia

Conversations with ordinary people, with extraordinary impact on strategies, success stories, spirituality and leadership.