The Transformation Mindset and the Power of WIFM with Kyle Gustafson

I’ve had an eclectic career. I actually started as a civil engineer and then moved into business and digital leadership roles. I’ve worked across major Fortune 500 companies, two start-ups, and everything in between—across the US, Asia, and Europe. It’s been a fun ride so far.

What I focus on now is helping companies accelerate commerce through digital means. Not just eCommerce, but really thinking about the tools and technologies that make commerce more efficient and effective.

Aaron: Great answer. Looking at your LinkedIn—and from the conversations we’ve had before this—you’ve been at companies like Office Depot and Staples. Do you consider that the same job, or were those separate stints?

Kyle: I’ve done a tour through all the major office retailers. I started at Corporate Express, which was pure B2B. Fun fact: at the height of the Internet Retailer top 10, three of the top five were Office Depot, Staples, and OfficeMax. The only reason Corporate Express wasn’t on the list was because it was purely B2B.

I worked at Corporate Express, which was acquired by Staples. Later I was at OfficeMax, which merged with Office Depot. So, all different jobs, but across all of them.

Aaron: Got it. And what were you doing for those brands?

Kyle: I started by leveraging my civil engineering background to improve the quality of private-label office products. Manufacturers were really good at making things cheap, but not necessarily high quality. My role was to help them make products that were both affordable and high quality, and then build brands around them.

That meant figuring out: how do you build a brand? How do you market it? How do you merchandise it online? What tools do you need to do that? And how do you build organizations across the globe to support it?

Aaron: And that was all brand new at the time, right? There wasn’t a lot of received wisdom yet about how to merchandise online.

Kyle: Yeah, it was still early days. We were figuring it out as we went, which was really exciting. Honestly, I still use some of the tools we built back then today. That period taught me a lot about merchandising—how people shop, how to present products, when and why to present them, basket-building, all the fundamentals that everyone in commerce needs to think through.

Aaron: Well, as Master Yogurt said in Spaceballs: “Merchandising! It’s the secret of the universe.”

So after your office supply stints, you spent some time at a company listeners might have heard of—Amazon. Maybe you did something with them?

Kyle: Yes, sir. I went to work for Amazon in Europe. And if you haven’t figured it out, Amazon is basically thousands of small businesses under one roof.

I ended up leading three businesses there. It started with one and quickly grew to three.

The first was expanding their hardlines private brands—what most people would recognize as Amazon Basics, though there are many other brands under that umbrella. I built that out across five European Amazon sites.

The second was Direct Import Supply Chain. Our goal there was to drive savings by sourcing products directly from the country of manufacture. For example, instead of a USB-C drive manufacturer importing into Europe and distributing from there, my team negotiated deals to buy directly in Asia and then built the supply chain and tech to bring those products into Europe more efficiently. That saved Amazon a lot of money.

The third business I started from scratch was consumables—think consumer packaged goods private brands. We built it from zero: identifying what brands would resonate, which customers to target, how to merchandise and advertise within the Amazon ecosystem. As my boss used to say, “You always start at the bottom of the page.” So we had to figure out how to climb up without any shortcuts, which was a great challenge.

Aaron: Makes sense. Although I imagine being inside Amazon gave you access to some tools to help climb up the page.

Kyle: It wasn’t starting completely from zero, but there was definitely a lot of friction. Let’s just say it wasn’t as simple as calling up Jeff for help.

Aaron: Looking at your experience, that’s a pretty straightforward story—sourcing, merchandising, supply chains, physical products. But then, about seven or eight years ago, I start seeing the word “transformation” show up in your job descriptions.

That’s interesting for us because a lot of our listeners are practitioners in manufacturing and distribution, right in the middle of—or planning—a digital transformation. Walk us through how you went from building those three businesses at Amazon to joining the consulting world, and what digital transformation looked like for you.

Kyle: Sure. Actually, I’ll back up a bit to my Office Depot days before Amazon. When Office Depot merged with OfficeMax, my role was to reconstruct the private-brand group—basically a brand within a brand.

Office Depot had 10 times the number of POs compared to OfficeMax for roughly the same number of products. The only way to handle that scale with fewer resources was to leverage tools we’d already built at OfficeMax and force the organization to adopt them. That was probably my first real taste of transformation: prioritizing tools that enabled teams to do more with less.

Then at Amazon, building out the import systems and private brands was similar but on a much bigger scale. Amazon is obsessed with scale. I probably heard that word six million times. My boss once stopped me mid-problem-solving and said, “You’re not thinking 20 years from now.” That’s the mindset there—always long-term, always building for scale.

So by the time I came back to the US and started working with consumer brands and distributors, transformation was already embedded in how I thought. The question became: how do you solve immediate problems while keeping that long-term mindset?

Aaron: Right—20-year timelines. Boards love those.

Kyle: (laughs) They probably do, but the truth is you always have to balance it. You’ve got short-term results you need to deliver, but you also need to be building for the future.

For me, transformation is about continual learning—cultivating curiosity, using data to drive decisions, and adapting as you go. That’s the real transformation mindset.

And today, with AI giving people either twitches, excitement, or confusion—sometimes all three—we’re at another inflection point. In consulting especially, your job is like being a doctor: come in, assess quickly, and lay out a plan for transformation. And if you get to help execute on that plan, that’s the fun part.

Aaron: That makes a ton of sense. Digital transformation comes up constantly on this podcast. Sometimes it’s framed as a pure technology initiative—like too many ERPs aging out, systems that need to be replaced. Other times it’s organizational or cultural change, maybe driven by a merger or an ownership change.

I’m curious—in your experience, what motivates a company to transform? Because it’s painful. Technology change is one thing, but people and culture—that’s often harder. Where do you usually see it start?

Kyle: Great question. And honestly, I take an Amazon-style approach: work backwards. Start with the vision. What’s the North Star?

That motivation can be different things—wanting to be the dominant player in the market, wanting to expand into a broader marketplace, or sometimes just wanting to keep up. But once you have that vision, you can work back into the pieces: what technology enables it, what processes support it, what people drive it.

If you don’t set that vision first, you just end up chasing shiny objects. Technology moves fast, and if you’re not aligned, you can miss the train.

Aaron: There’s so much I want to say about shiny object syndrome in the C-suite. I’m tempted to bring it back to AI, but I’ll hold that thought for now.

From your experience—what actually gets the ball rolling when companies decide to hire you? Because today you’re running a consultancy, BJM Partners, right?

Kyle: Yeah, that’s right.

Aaron: And you’re doing a lot of consulting for consumer brands, distributors, companies that want to transform. So when they pick up the phone and say, “We’ve got to call Kyle,” what are the first words out of their mouth? What usually starts that conversation?

Kyle: Typically it starts with the business imperative. We’re all in business to grow and to make money, so that’s where the pain shows up first.

For example, a client might say: “I want to reposition my company by adding more selection, so I need the software to build a marketplace and onboard more suppliers.”

Or another might say: “I need my field sales team to be more efficient and grow their customer relationships. What do I need to do technologically to enable that? Where do I start?”

That’s usually the entry point—there’s an immediate pain or goal. From there, my approach is to take a step back: define the vision, understand where they are now, where they need to go, and then connect those dots.

Aaron: So it begins with a specific pain point, but once you pull on that thread you start to uncover a lot of other challenges around it.

You’ve worked with huge companies, but you’ve also worked with start-ups and smaller teams. Does the process look different depending on the size of the client?

Kyle: You definitely have to adapt to the client. Start-ups, for example, can move faster and change things more easily—but they usually don’t have the capital to take big risks. Larger enterprises might have the cash but changing course takes much longer.

So it’s always a balance of risk and reward. But regardless of size, you have to align on the vision and the principles of success at the beginning. And that definition can evolve.

For example, “We want to be the ultimate distributor of screws” is a very different goal than “We want to be the ultimate distributor of hardware.” The selection, strategy, and tools look completely different.

Locking that definition down upfront is critical. It keeps everyone aligned, and it makes the project itself go more efficiently because every decision can be measured against those guiding principles.

Aaron: Yeah, I’d agree. Having worked in both big organizations and start-ups, I’d say the hardest part is exactly that—nailing down what “success” really means.

Kyle: Absolutely. And that’s often the toughest part of any project. Sometimes it’s as simple as: “We want to grow our eCommerce.”

When I joined McLane, I actually asked the CEO, “What does eCommerce mean to you?” And his answer was, “I don’t know. You need to help me define it.”

That honesty was refreshing, and it highlights the real challenge: does eCommerce mean a website? A webshop? Or does it mean that all of your commerce is digitally enabled, so you can meet customers wherever and however they want to shop—with the same pricing, delivery terms, and service?

Aaron: That’s such an interesting point. In my own work at Oro, I ask the same thing: what does eCommerce actually mean to you? Because you’ll get wildly different answers.

Is punchout or eProcurement eCommerce? Is EDI eCommerce? Is CPQ eCommerce? What about an order phoned into a call center, typed into a system, and routed to an OMS?

“E” just means electronic—so which touchpoint makes it officially eCommerce? Is it only web orders? Only portal orders? And if that’s the case, how do the systems you’re buying reinforce the other channels?

What about Amazon marketplace orders? Do those count as eCommerce? Inside organizations, this is often a loaded question, because sales teams are comped differently depending on how that order is labeled.

As a consultant, that must be an interesting situation. If you’re brought in to “fix eCommerce,” how far does your mandate go?

Kyle: That’s always the big question. And it depends a lot on who the sponsor is—who’s driving the project internally. Context matters.

I don’t think the term “eCommerce” is going away, but I do think “commerce” is quickly coming to mean something broader. First it was eCommerce, then omnichannel, and now it’s all converging.

Everything is going to be connected, and it should be. If I’m responsible for growing the business, I can’t just look at one channel in isolation. I have to pull all the pieces together.

That’s where it gets tricky—companies often have different accountabilities and incentives by channel. But I think the real value is in understanding how those channels connect, how they contribute to each other, and then measuring that with clear metrics.

If you do that, you actually drive common success. You end up with a unified team working toward growth, instead of an infighting team competing internally.

Aaron: 100%. And for public companies, the stock price kind of answers the question of what’s good for the whole business. It’s right there in front of everyone—in their options or RSUs.

Now, Kyle, I’d call you a digital transformation leader. You’ve done it multiple times, across lots of contexts. Here’s a question I like to ask people in your position: how do you know when to stop?

If you’re a consultant, maybe it’s simple—you stop when the project ends or the sponsor stops paying your invoice. But if you’re inside the company, can transformation ever really be finished?

Can you ever say, “We’ve transformed, we’re done, we’re future-proof”? Or is it never actually done?

Kyle: Honestly, I think the only way it stops is if you’ve sworn you’ll never buy another cell phone. Because otherwise—no, it doesn’t stop.

That’s why I like to talk about having a digital mindset. There’s a book by that name, The Digital Mindset, which I recommend. It’s about staying curious about what’s around the next corner. You don’t need to be an expert in every new thing, but you need to know enough to connect it back to your business and figure out how it helps you grow.

So for me, transformation is never-ending. It’s about continually improving—adopting new tools, getting faster, serving customers better.

Especially in industries like distribution, where the mindset has traditionally been: “We’re really good at moving X from this supplier to that customer.” That evolved from fax orders, to phone orders, to some digitization. But it’s usually not on the leading edge.

Compare that to how you shop on Amazon on your phone—completely different from how you shop in B2B. That’s a transformational leap.

The real opportunity is instilling a mindset of continuous improvement. Learn, adapt, shut some things down, double down on what works. Technology won’t slow down—it’s only accelerating. And the companies that keep evolving with it will stay relevant.

Aaron: That’s a great point. Continuous improvement—Kaizen—is really apt here. The tools keep changing, but the business goals don’t: grow revenue, improve profitability, gain market share, create value.

The danger is when companies confuse the tool for the transformation. I’ve seen it plenty of times. A company hires an agency or a partner to build them an eCommerce site. The site goes live, DNS is cut over, project complete. Transformation “done.”

Two years later, the site is shut down because no one used it. It never created value. The spark never jumped the gap—buyers didn’t adopt it, sales teams didn’t use it, marketing couldn’t leverage it. It was treated as an IT project, not a business initiative.

Have you run into that situation?

Kyle: Many times. And it’s exactly what gives consulting a bad reputation. You’ll hear: “We need a CRM.” Okay, but what do you want the CRM to do? “I don’t know, we just need one.”

Then the project becomes: once the CRM is live, we’re done. But that’s not the point. It’s the processes and behaviors around the CRM that matter just as much.

That’s why I always push the idea of continuous improvement. Amazon has this distinction between output metrics and input metrics.

Output metrics are things like sales, margin, profit. Input metrics are: how often are people actually using the new tool? Are they getting more productive with it? Are customers engaging more?

If you don’t track input metrics, you miss whether the investment is actually working. Because in most cases, you’re going to keep investing in these tools—adding pieces, adding features. And the business side needs to be thinking about adoption and usability just as much as IT is thinking about “go live.”

Aaron: That’s such an interesting point. In my own work at Oro, I ask the same thing: what does eCommerce actually mean to you? Because you’ll get wildly different answers.

Is punchout or eProcurement eCommerce? Is EDI eCommerce? Is CPQ eCommerce? What about an order phoned into a call center, typed into a system, and routed to an OMS?

“E” just means electronic—so which touchpoint makes it officially eCommerce? Is it only web orders? Only portal orders? And if that’s the case, how do the systems you’re buying reinforce the other channels?

What about Amazon marketplace orders? Do those count as eCommerce? Inside organizations, this is often a loaded question, because sales teams are comped differently depending on how that order is labeled.

As a consultant, that must be an interesting situation. If you’re brought in to “fix eCommerce,” how far does your mandate go?

Kyle: That’s always the big question. And it depends a lot on who the sponsor is—who’s driving the project internally. Context matters.

I don’t think the term “eCommerce” is going away, but I do think “commerce” is quickly coming to mean something broader. First it was eCommerce, then omnichannel, and now it’s all converging.

Everything is going to be connected, and it should be. If I’m responsible for growing the business, I can’t just look at one channel in isolation. I have to pull all the pieces together.

That’s where it gets tricky—companies often have different accountabilities and incentives by channel. But I think the real value is in understanding how those channels connect, how they contribute to each other, and then measuring that with clear metrics.

If you do that, you actually drive common success. You end up with a unified team working toward growth, instead of an infighting team competing internally.

Aaron: 100%. And for public companies, the stock price kind of answers the question of what’s good for the whole business. It’s right there in front of everyone—in their options or RSUs.

Now, Kyle, I’d call you a digital transformation leader. You’ve done it multiple times, across lots of contexts. Here’s a question I like to ask people in your position: how do you know when to stop?

If you’re a consultant, maybe it’s simple—you stop when the project ends or the sponsor stops paying your invoice. But if you’re inside the company, can transformation ever really be finished?

Can you ever say, “We’ve transformed, we’re done, we’re future-proof”? Or is it never actually done?

Kyle: Honestly, I think the only way it stops is if you’ve sworn you’ll never buy another cell phone. Because otherwise—no, it doesn’t stop.

That’s why I like to talk about having a digital mindset. There’s a book by that name, The Digital Mindset, which I recommend. It’s about staying curious about what’s around the next corner. You don’t need to be an expert in every new thing, but you need to know enough to connect it back to your business and figure out how it helps you grow.

So for me, transformation is never-ending. It’s about continually improving—adopting new tools, getting faster, serving customers better.

Especially in industries like distribution, where the mindset has traditionally been: “We’re really good at moving X from this supplier to that customer.” That evolved from fax orders, to phone orders, to some digitization. But it’s usually not on the leading edge.

Compare that to how you shop on Amazon on your phone—completely different from how you shop in B2B. That’s a transformational leap.

The real opportunity is instilling a mindset of continuous improvement. Learn, adapt, shut some things down, double down on what works. Technology won’t slow down—it’s only accelerating. And the companies that keep evolving with it will stay relevant.

Aaron: That’s a great point. Continuous improvement—Kaizen—is really apt here. The tools keep changing, but the business goals don’t: grow revenue, improve profitability, gain market share, create value.

The danger is when companies confuse the tool for the transformation. I’ve seen it plenty of times. A company hires an agency or a partner to build them an eCommerce site. The site goes live, DNS is cut over, project complete. Transformation “done.”

Two years later, the site is shut down because no one used it. It never created value. The spark never jumped the gap—buyers didn’t adopt it, sales teams didn’t use it, marketing couldn’t leverage it. It was treated as an IT project, not a business initiative.

Have you run into that situation?

Kyle: Many times. And it’s exactly what gives consulting a bad reputation. You’ll hear: “We need a CRM.” Okay, but what do you want the CRM to do? “I don’t know, we just need one.”

Then the project becomes: once the CRM is live, we’re done. But that’s not the point. It’s the processes and behaviors around the CRM that matter just as much.

That’s why I always push the idea of continuous improvement. Amazon has this distinction between output metrics and input metrics.

Output metrics are things like sales, margin, profit. Input metrics are: how often are people actually using the new tool? Are they getting more productive with it? Are customers engaging more?

If you don’t track input metrics, you miss whether the investment is actually working. Because in most cases, you’re going to keep investing in these tools—adding pieces, adding features. And the business side needs to be thinking about adoption and usability just as much as IT is thinking about “go live.”

Aaron: It’s funny you mention CRM. I was in an internal meeting this morning, and of course Oro has CRM built into our platform. We don’t sell it separately, it’s not front-and-center, but it’s amazing how often prospects say, “Oh wait, you do CRM too?”

Even very large distributors often don’t have any CRM or sales automation tools. They’re running on spreadsheets, email, and whatever’s in the ERP. That’s it.

Meanwhile, sales teams hate CRM. They don’t see the value. If you don’t build the right processes and culture around it, it’s just a digital paperweight. The board can say, “We’ve got one,” but it does nothing.

And you’ve used an acronym I love for this—WIFM. Can you explain what that stands for, and how it shapes your approach when you’re building teams and organizations around transformation?

Kyle: Sure. WIFM stands for “What’s in it for me?”

And I’ll be honest—if I could go back to school, I think I’d study psychology. In eCommerce and digital commerce, it’s fascinating to see what drives behavior and how you can use that to serve people better.

Because at the end of the day, that’s my job: use technology to serve people, make them more efficient, help them enjoy their work more, do things better.

So WIFM comes up constantly, especially in big organizations. Everyone has their own objectives. If you introduce a new tool—say, a CRM—the first thing a salesperson asks is: “Why should I use this? What’s in it for me?”

If the answer is, “Because we need the data,” that’s not motivating. But if the answer is: “This CRM will let you walk into a customer meeting knowing their last five purchases, what they’re missing, how much they should be buying. You can show them that in 10 seconds, place the order with one click, and still have time to ask about their family,”—that’s motivating.

Now you’ve transformed their work. They’re more effective, the customer gets better service, and the company benefits. That’s the power of framing it around WIFM.

Aaron: Exactly. You have to show the value, not just demand compliance.

Let’s switch gears a bit. You’ve had such a wide range of experiences—big companies, start-ups, consulting. Can you share a story that really illustrates the kind of work you do, or the situations you’ve found yourself in? Something that sums up your approach?

Kyle: That’s a good one. Honestly, I’ll probably blend three or four stories into one.

The reason I got into commerce at all is because I was trained as a civil engineer. Early in my career, I realized I had two choices: become a technical expert—calculating designs, solving equations—or go the business route, connecting the dots between systems.

Even in engineering, I liked that connecting role better. A bridge connects to a roadway, connects to drainage, connects to soil. I enjoyed making those connections. That’s why I started an MBA.

Right around that time, I got a call from a friend at Corporate Express. Their boss asked, “Why should I hire a civil engineer for this job?”

My answer was: “Civil engineering teaches you a methodology for solving problems. It’s not just about bridges—it’s about how you approach problems systematically.”

And that’s how it played out. My first assignment was: “We’re selling millions of toner cartridges, but they’re not lasting as long as we claim. Fix it.” I knew nothing about toner cartridges. But I knew how to solve problems. I learned from the experts, connected the dots, and we solved it.

That’s been the pattern throughout my career—jumping into new domains, learning quickly, and connecting the people who have the deep expertise with the bigger business problem.

More recently, at McLane, we built a tool called Bestsellers. On the surface it’s simple: show buyers at convenience store chains what products are selling in their region that they aren’t carrying.

Sounds obvious, but at scale it’s incredibly powerful. Imagine being a buyer for 250 stores and realizing you’re missing the top-selling item in your market. That tool gave them visibility they never had before, and it changed their buying behavior overnight.

So whether it’s toner cartridges or retail analytics, the principle is the same: understand what people need, connect it to the data, and build the tools that unlock value.

Aaron: That’s a great story. And I love how you framed it as a reverse WIFM. Speaking of which, you once told me a story about an Alexa-powered microwave that I found hilarious. Why can’t I buy one of those? Who wanted that?

Kyle: (laughs) Yeah, that was an interesting one. I wasn’t there for the entire project, but I was at Amazon during the height of Alexa taking off. The Echo was exploding—I actually had one of the first devices they shipped. And the whole strategy was: get Alexa everywhere, proliferate it across the home.

So leadership said, “We should put Alexa into other appliances. Where do people interact the most in the kitchen? The microwave.”

The idea was: people actually punch buttons on a microwave. You don’t interact with the fridge—you just open the door. But with the microwave, you engage. So the mandate came down: build a $50 Alexa-enabled microwave.

The logic was clear: if we could make it cheap enough, people would buy it, and Alexa would become part of their daily cooking routine.

But the challenge was cost. When we ran the should-cost analysis, it wasn’t even close. Just the Alexa hardware alone was $12–15, and that was considered cheap at the time. Add the microwave housing, electronics, assembly—you were way over the $50 target before you even had a finished product.

I think a prototype did get built, but it never really took off. And there were other issues too—like, how many people even have a freestanding microwave versus one built into the cabinetry? Installation complexity, business case problems.

So yeah, you don’t see many Alexa-powered microwaves in the wild for good reason. It was a fascinating learning experience though: tight constraints, good intent, but a classic case where the WIFM for the customer just wasn’t there. Did consumers really want to talk to their microwave? Probably not.

Aaron: That’s the perfect example. From Amazon’s perspective, it made sense—it fit their Alexa strategy. But from a customer’s perspective, the WIFM wasn’t compelling. They weren’t raising their hands saying, “Please let me talk to my microwave.”

And that ties back to what we said earlier about merchandising: it’s ultimately about the buyer’s WIFM. You can’t ignore that, or you’re sunk.

So let me shift gears and ask a different kind of question. Who’s someone you consider a mentor—someone who gave you advice or support that stuck with you throughout your career?

Kyle: That one’s easy. His name is Ron Lala. He was my boss’s boss when I moved from engineering into consumer products at Corporate Express.

At the time, I was an ambitious MBA student trying to get my foot in the door. We had a hard time scheduling the interview, so I said, “I’ll come in on a Saturday.” I met him in his office on a Saturday—he was wearing a pink polo, super relaxed. But don’t let that fool you—he was one of the most intense people I ever worked for.

He led with principles. For example, in meetings he’d say, “I don’t want to see your presentation. Show me your spreadsheet. Walk me through how you got to this number.”

He’d pick a number at random and ask, “What does this mean? How did you get it?” At first it was intimidating, but I came to realize what he wanted: to make sure you had a sound methodology. If you had that, he could trust the results.

Working for Ron taught me the value of principle-driven leadership over micromanagement. Use the collective intelligence of your team, align on a clear vision, and focus on the process. If the process is solid, you can tweak it as needed.

To this day, Ron’s probably one of the first people I’d call if I had a big business decision. He can still jump into a business case and cut through the noise in 15 minutes flat.

Aaron: That’s great advice. I’ve had a few leaders like that myself—people who can cut straight past the deck and into the numbers, into the actual building blocks of the case. We probably need more of them.

And you’re right, with AI becoming more common, it’s going to be even easier for someone to generate a fancy plan without being able to show their work. Leaders like Ron keep people honest.

Maybe that’s our job now too—as the next generation of leaders—to be the ones asking, “Show me the numbers.”

Kyle: Exactly. And there’s always going to be that balance between data and gut.

I remember one of the first automated distribution centers I visited in Germany. Every step of the process was tracked digitally—hundreds of steps from the customer placing an order to shipping. But there was still someone on the floor saying, “Hey, step 55 didn’t trigger. I need to go fix that right now.”

That balance will always exist. We need the data, but we also need the human judgment. That’s what will make companies successful in the future.

Aaron: Well said. All right, Kyle, last question. This isn’t a serious one—it’s the same question I ask every guest.

Name one book, movie, TV show, magazine, podcast—anything you’ve consumed recently—that you’d recommend to others. It doesn’t have to be business-related. It can be serious, or it can just be fun.

Kyle: I’ll give you two books, both on the serious side.

The first is Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. I just sent my kid off to college, and as the dad who’s into self-help and personal growth, I gave him that book. It’s short, it’s easy to read, but it’s powerful. At that age, if I’d read it, I think it would have changed my perspective.

The second is Malcolm Gladwell’s The Revenge of the Tipping Point. What I like is that it’s an act of vulnerability—he revisited his own earlier work, admitted what he got wrong, and rethought it. That ties directly into my philosophy of continuous learning and evolution. You always have to question yourself and adapt.

Aaron: Good picks. Man’s Search for Meaning—not exactly a light beach read, but definitely one of those timeless books. And Gladwell’s willingness to revisit his own work is a good model for all of us.

Kyle, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to share your experience and insights.

If listeners want to connect with you—or maybe even hire you—where can they find you?

Kyle: BJM Partners has a website, so that’s one option. But honestly, the easiest way is just to connect with me directly on LinkedIn.

Aaron: Perfect. We’ll include that in the show notes. Kyle, thanks again for joining us, and thanks for such a great conversation.

Kyle: Thanks, Aaron. I really appreciate it.