How I Financed It

From Tokenization To An Oil Deal: Building Global Settlement

• Keith Kohler • Season 1 • Episode 5

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What if your fundraising edge isn’t a prettier deck, but the energy you bring into the room? We sit down with Miami operator and “crypto guy” Kyle Sonlin to unpack how conviction, curiosity, and consistent behavior become the signals investors actually trust. The journey winds through a decade of Miami tech growth, the post-remote shift in capital access, and why in-person time still matters when you’re reading character and momentum.

Kyle pulls back the curtain on tokenization in plain language: move cap tables to a shared digital ledger, compress the compliance burden, and make private markets more liquid without ditching guardrails. He connects this with the JOBS Act’s broader investor base and explains why automation is no longer a nice-to-have when you’re handling cross-border investors at scale. Then we get tactical: how he reversed the pitch by collecting buy-side mandates first, why family offices decide differently than VC funds, and how “side quests” become the hidden gateway to real checks.

The standout story is a $75 million oil refinery acquisition completed with a crypto-to-fiat bridge in minutes, solving a payments headache that would have dragged for months through traditional rails. From there, Kyle outlines Global Settlement’s capital stack and strategy—multi-layered SAFEs, deal-specific SPVs, a network token aligned with clarity on the rules, private credit and trade finance, and a fully backed digital dollar to move money globally with speed and compliance. Threaded through it all is tenacity: flying to Asia on a credit card, rebuilding during a dry market, and betting on a thesis grounded in real-world frictions and practical tech.

If you’re a founder or investor navigating family offices, cross-border capital, or the future of private markets, you’ll walk away with a playbook that is equal parts relationship and rigor. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s raising, and leave a quick review telling us the biggest financing bottleneck you want solved next.

Connect with Keith on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithkohler1/

Introducing Kyle And Miami Tech Roots

Keith Kohler

Hi everyone, it's Keith Kohler, your financing man, and I want to welcome you to episode five, episode number five of how I financed it. Um, by way of background, again, you may know that I help companies get the right financing at the right time. So that's transaction me, getting the deal done. And there's another part of me that helps founders feel more comfortable with the way they manage their business finances so that they understand how to apply the financing I get for them. And that's transformation me. So that combination of transaction plus transformation is what equals financing man. And what we do here at How I Financed It is something I've really always wanted to do. And now this fifth episode with four already filmed, I'm excited to continue to do something which I think is very important, which is chronicling the journey of founders or their professional and personal journey through their business from the lens primarily of how they chose to finance their business. And then from there, riffing and seeing where the energy takes us to talk about strategy or personal development or roadblocks or stumbles or opportunity, anything that might come up in the course of our conversation. So there's just a little bit that's of this that's planned and a lot of it that's spontaneous. And that's the part that really excites me to see what happens. So really excited for today's conversation because this is a departure for me. This is something a little different. My core industry that I know the most about is the consumer industry and specifically consumer packaged goods. And yet today I'm really excited because we're going to be looking at a founder who has been groundbreaking and disruptive, mainly in the technology space, but really quite frankly across all industries. So can't wait to talk to him. And excited to have Kyle Sondland join me today. Here we are. Kyle is here, everybody.

Kyle Sonlin

Hello, hello. Keith, thanks for having me. And look, I think you're underselling yourself with your expertise in the oh come on, you uh really. You know, you're you I've you've been a prolific investor here and uh big supporter of the Miami Tech movement. I think that we've had so many great conversations around the trends in this market. I I would I would hardly call it outside of your comfort zone.

Keith Kohler

Well, I appreciate that. And and you know, that that actually is an interesting thing with founders, right? The way we think about ourselves sometimes can be a little, or the way we may choose to sometimes make ourselves perhaps feel a little bit limited or even small, versus we recognize that outsiders may see ourselves better than we than we see ourselves sometimes.

Kyle Sonlin

I think that's a good point. It's it's that with the psychological phenomenon, the Dunning-Kruger effect, right? This the smarter someone is, the more you know that you don't know things, or the less, you know, the less, the less you know, the more you think you know as much in your kind of small bubble, right? So so it's it's more high praise than anything, Keith.

Remote Fundraising And In‑Person Energy

Keith Kohler

No, I appreciate that, Kyle. Thank you so much. And really, back to you, when you think about where you've been, right, and how fundamental you've been in your own contribution to, as you call it, the Miami technology ecosystem, it's quite something. And you know you've done it for quite a long time and you're doing more, right?

Kyle Sonlin

Yeah, no, it's it's it's cool because you know, my journey to the Miami tech movement started 10 years ago, uh, in one month. And so I'll be 10 years here in the South Florida ecosystem. And as an entrepreneur, I knew I wanted to be in technology. And at the time I was kind of in the early days of the crypto economy and was trying to think about where I wanted to be. And I realized how much untapped value there was in the Miami ecosystem that it just felt really slept on at the time. There was a lot of wealth, a lot of success, but it was all in real estate. It was all in family office kind of wealth management, boom and bus style thing. Luxury cars, you know, and watches, right? But there wasn't a lot of technology. And I realized that was, you know, the entrepreneur inside of me calling, right? That was an opportunity, not in an industry vertical, but in a particular geolocation that presented an opportunity. And so not only did I did I kind of jump into this ecosystem, eyes wide open with respect to the opportunity and some of the challenges of being in kind of a non-target city, if you will, for some of the technology, but being here for 10 years, it feels like I'm a part of a startup within my own city because it feels like Miami is at this point probably closer to a Series A style of tech company than when I joined, and it was maybe in that seed stage. Right. Yeah. It's fun to feel like the city is growing alongside the businesses that I'm building here, which is which is neat.

Keith Kohler

I think that's really a good insight because I've lived here since 1997. And when I came, I was originally transferred here with the entertainment industry. The entertainment industry was huge, uh mainly for Latin American distribution at that time. That then changed with dollars and other currencies going in different directions and different legislation, actually. But the point is, you're right, here we are in a city that has always been dynamic and ever-changing, a lot of that energy coming both within domestic and then international and migration and and all of that coming together. And then here over this last 10 years, indeed, you could write a pretty cool history of what Miami Tech has looked like over this time. And then not just you as an individual, the other individuals who've been fun uh foundational in building that, plus the growth of the institutions that support it as well, and even education and arts that come along with that too.

Kyle Sonlin

That's right. That's right. It's been it's been cool to see, and you know, certainly nobody could have predicted the pandemic, but but Miami is certainly one of those cities that I think it has to be at the very top of the list, if not number one, in terms of cities that benefited from the you know remote work movement here in the United States. And uh it's it was cool to be a part of the scene before that and then get to see this kind of explosive growth, and especially in the venture capital game and certainly in technology, there is a lot of upfront costs. And so you do need to raise a lot of capital in order to get a business off of the ground. And historically, it would require in-person meetings and it would require you to go specifically to these offices. And so if you weren't geolocated close to a cluster of investors, good luck trying to raise capital. Good luck trying to get your business off the ground. I think that that today, more than ever, there's opportunities all around the world in order to build great businesses, and it matters much less your specific proximity, I think, unless you're in specific niche industries, of which Miami has its own competitive edges to of San Francisco with respect to Latin American exposure, exposed to with respect to commodities and a variety of other opportunities.

Keith Kohler

I'll jump into that just one further detail. Do you still feel like is there a healthy mix of you can present over Zoom or other platform versus in real life experiences in order to raise capital these days?

Kyle Sonlin

Yeah, you know, look, I I I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth to a little bit of a degree because I do love in-person. I think that there it is hard. When you thrive in that setting, it's hard to replace the value that comes with shaking someone's hand, spending some time with them. I'm definitely an energy kind of guy. And so you can feel it right away with someone if if they're you can kind of tell right off the bat and with a decent level of conviction and certainty if they're a trustworthy person based off of a five-minute introductory conversation, right? Let alone if you spend an hour or multiple hours together in person over a variety of meetings, you're gonna get to know somebody, I think, just significantly better. And building teams, it also applies the same way. I think that in-person meetings, using whiteboards and and planning everything out and aligning everyone together, it is more efficient in person. So I don't want to say that that it's uh remote only in this environment, but but certainly I think that maintaining touch and doing one in-person and then two virtuals or something like that um allows you to keep the momentum in a way that you weren't able to do before.

What Investors And Founders Look For

Keith Kohler

I have to confess, I really embraced the pandemic and enjoy the online environment. Sure. Um not just for time and efficiency reasons, but there's something about, because I've can't I came from television and the entertainment industry, there's something about being on a screen that I feel incredibly comfortable with. And so happily, and how I finance it, this is really easy. I want to I want to build on one thing. I was excited that you brought up the word energy, and you talked about, hey, in that in-real life setting, you're picking up on energy. And I'm wondering broadly, what is it you're really looking for? And how would you kind of describe the varieties of energies you're seeing when you're having these in-person investor meetings?

Kyle Sonlin

That's a really great question. And and I do think that there are maybe slightly nuanced answers based off of if you're approaching it from a founder's perspective, of which I've certainly taken probably the most meetings in my career in the founder seat. But I've also taken plenty of meetings on the investor seat and plenty of meetings on the customer seat, and plenty of meetings on the syndicate or or you know, advisor seat. So there, there, I think there's probably different perspectives that that you could share. I think from an investment perspective, when you're when you're looking at a founder, when you're looking at an operator, or even if you're a founder and you're looking for a partner, somebody that's maybe on that kind of in that grind with you. I'm really looking for passion, motivation, and conviction. I think those are three really, really important things that I look for. And it doesn't necessarily have to be particularly and solely focused on their business. I think that sometimes you get those founders that actually maybe a little bit of a turnoff if they're only focused on just their pitch and that's all they want to talk about all the time. Sometimes that feels a little bit too rigid. So I do like somebody that's a little bit more open-minded, I think generally. Um, so you can really understand how they approach problems outside of their area of expertise, perhaps, or outside of the scope to see if it's a just a really well-rehearsed uh sales pitch or if it's really a genuine and earnest conversation with somebody. So that depends a lot.

Keith Kohler

Yeah. Conversation being the key word, right? If it's naturally flowing, if it's not so wound up and scripted that it doesn't have any room to breathe. That's exactly right.

Kyle Sonlin

That's exactly right. And then on the founder side, looking for an investor, it also depends on what type of investor they are, right? So if you're raising capital, you're going to be targeting angels and high networks, right? These are individuals that are probably, they often are the most risk tolerant. They're ready to write a check with maybe nothing to show for it because they just believe in an individual. They believe in in the founder or or or they just want to be a part of something special.

Keith Kohler

Then you've got because you're often not having proof of concept at that phase, right? You might be pre-launch, pre-revenue, pre-fill in your favorite word. And you're right, they're focusing on Kyle. They're focusing in that other founder saying, Do I believe in him? Do I believe not just in the business valuation or sorry, the business proposition, the chance for scale and eventually a valuation and perhaps an exit? But do I trust and believe in Kyle as an individual to and potential co-founders to run to or to start, scale, and grow and sell a business?

Kyle Sonlin

Spot on, spot on. And when when I made angel investments, the other side of it too is that unlike a venture capital fund or even a family office, which generally would be run by their investment, you know, chief investment officer or something like that, they're really only measuring the success or failure of an investment based on the quantitative return. I think as an angel, you're investing in a person because they might bring a lot of great things to your life, right? I've invested in founders where I've said, look, I like your business. I think you're gonna be a really special person. And I want to invest in you because I believe in you and I want to build our relationship. And there's maybe a lot of goodwill value that can come with that. Maybe they have an incredible network. And maybe being one of their first checks opens up doors for you in your business vertical or in other opportunities that you're working on down the line, or it strengthens that relationship in a way that that helps maybe generate returns for you outside of the purely economic ones from the equity investment in the business. And I think that that's a more unique quality that that not that the higher levels of the food chain don't quite share the same value.

Angels, Vision, And Relationship Value

Keith Kohler

You know, that's really thoughtful. And I know that to be true when I think of my founders that I talk to for financing, right? The earlier stage folks in the angel or seed stage of their development are much more likely to offer and to speak with me about the vision, the mission, the social impact, if it's there. Any of those could be high volume, low volume, and anywhere in between. Yet you always see that as part of the discussion, the deck, et cetera. Right. And and I agree with you as they become more mature businesses, and perhaps a big event for a lot of them is if they have a finance team internal.

Kyle Sonlin

Right.

Keith Kohler

Then the financing request or the discussion on financing is hey, I just need money.

Kyle Sonlin

Yeah, here's the revenue, here's what I need.

Keith Kohler

Well, I have one right now that I'm talking to that happens to be a factory and it's it's a middle market company. And they don't need to sell me on the vision because they have so much performance, right? And yet I wonder if, and this is a big question, I think, for all of us is what if you kept or what if a founder continued to express herself or himself still at the middle market space, 50 to 100 million dollars in revenue, with still as much of an impact on or as much of a um emphasis on the mission, the vision. I wonder, right?

Kyle Sonlin

It's a great question. I I do think that part of it probably, and and not to necessarily excuse the behavior, but part of it likely is actually just pitching fatigue. Uh, I I and I can relate, right? You know, I think the last we had a big deal that you and I talked about not too long ago, um, in working with a large-scale oil operator and and capitalizing a large Latin American deal. And I took that opportunity as a founder and reached out to hundreds of people within my network, just letting them know hey, I've been in the commodities game a lot recently. You know, I launched this new business, it's been going really well. Would love to catch up if you think there's any synergies within whatever you're working on. And had my Calendly and sent out the Calendly, which allows people to book on my calendar, 30-minute meetings. And it resulted in, I kid you not, Keith, the last five weeks, I've averaged 13 and a half meetings each day, 30-minute meetings. That's seven, eight hours of meetings, not including, you know, other calls that are more sponsor, you know, spontaneous with my team or with you know other investors or or whoever. And obviously doesn't include the work involved in in my day-to-day basis. And so I gotta say, at some point, I even I was a little fatigued in talking about everything I was doing after you speak with 300 people in you know a month's span. And so, again, not to exclude maybe that's what is the difference between that founder that can take it to a trillion dollar company versus the one that that kind of peaks when it just becomes a financial you know calculation. But I I've definitely seen that with founder fatigue.

Cost, Location, And Building In Miami

Keith Kohler

Yeah, I I really love that, Kyle. And talking honestly about that founder fatigue, pitch fatigue. That's just like, all right, here's my numbers, are you interested or not? Well, and I think it gets to that, right? Because especially in a dry equity environment, when I've spoken to founders, so many of them will they haven't expressed it quite like you have in as compact a way. Yet they're they don't hold back in I'm exhausted and oh my god, I talked to a hundred people and no one's really responding to me. And there's a part of me that has always wondered not that there's anything wrong with the people or their business, because we know all the macro factors that are the headwinds that are scaring people away or a group mentality towards us all. And yet I do wonder what could be the breakthrough, right? Like, is there anything about how that founder is showing up in expression, in tone, in who knows? Even the way they chose choose to dress or or provide an additional impression that could tip something from a no to a yes or a maybe to a yes or anywhere in between, as well as what you're saying to the pitch fatigue of ad nauseum, they're just repeating their numbers, the same vision. Maybe that vision and mission falls flat at a certain point because hey, no one is ever, damn it, no one's paid attention to me. No one is as passionate as I am. And you mentioned passion at the beginning, and I thought that was critical. Can you imagine you're all revved up passion, mission, vision, fill in the rest of the blanks? And the other side of the table is just not responding to any of that. I've been there. You've been, and and again, to your point, you've been on both you've worn all those several hats, right?

Kyle Sonlin

Yes.

Keith Kohler

I would imagine you would even say there's been times like founders pitch you, and no, you don't identify with the passion, mission, and vision, right? You don't for whatever reason. It's it doesn't resonate, it's not relevant, whatever.

Kyle Sonlin

And that's kind of where I was going with this idea of you know, that conviction, motivation, passion. I like to see if you have it for things outside of the things that I clearly know you're passionate, convicted, and motivated about, right? Like of course anything, right? You know, you're the CEO or you're the founder or whatever of this company. I I I at a bare minimum, I expect that you're passionate and motivated about the business you're building. Otherwise, you know, you really aren't gonna make it. But does is that earnest? Is that genuine? Is that consistent across how you approach the rest of your life that I like to look for? Because that I think is a really good determinant. You know, I have I have a pretty high motor personally. And so you'll see that in every facet of of my life, right? Whether it's with my relationships, with my friends, with my relationship with my girlfriend, whether that's with my family, whether that's on the soccer pitch, I play competitive soccer, whether it's in the in the office, whether it's playing video games with my buddies, I'm the same level of intense. So if you know that, then you know that yeah, he's probably really gonna give it all in the business because that's just that's just who he is as a person, right? Whereas if it's somebody that kind of has to really force that energy in their nine to five perspective, but then behind the scenes, they're they're not kind of all in that way. I think it's an interesting, at least a data point. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's my way or the highway, but you know, it's considering it's how I live my life, it's it's I have a pretty good rubric for evaluating it on others.

Keith Kohler

I really love that because um I think what I often see is that the founder in his or her role as founder, and then the person might be two entirely separate people, right? And they could sometimes in the founder step into a performance, or dare I see, even uh a something or a persona that's not authentically them. And yet they may feel that that's the way they have to show up in order to impress Kyle in any one of his different hats. Now, I admit I can step into a performance at some time or elevate the energy or pull the energy back, and yet I know I'm doing it. I think for some people, because they might think entrepreneurship means I have to be a certain way or I have to be like everybody else, that it can be whether they recognize it or not, it can be a bit of performance art.

Kyle Sonlin

It's a great, great point. And it's kind of funny because the whole point of entrepreneurship is to do it your own way and to break the mold, right? It's it's an exact reason why Miami was so high on my list, on top of the reasons we described earlier. When I was deciding where I wanted to plant my entrepreneurial roots, it was kind of like, man, everybody goes to San Francisco. I don't want to do that. That was your only option. Maybe it would have been a great choice as well. I think it's gone great for me here in Miami, but like I'm maybe it would have been great there too. But for me, it felt like, you know what? I'm an entrepreneur. I'm gonna go somewhere else and build my brand in a totally new opportunity. I don't want to follow the direction of everybody else. And again, not disrespecting those that that go to San Francisco, but more so I think that trying to follow the status quo of what it means to be an entrepreneur, whether that's location-based, whether that's your attitude, whether that's your personality, to your point, like like you gotta build something genuine and have a clear and consistent narrative and do what you do best. If you're one of the best in the world at something, be that and and and find the people that that that resonates with, as opposed to trying to fit into a mold that um I think entrepreneurship rewards that out-of-the-box thinking.

Keith Kohler

Yeah, I think you know, as as you were saying that, I was thinking about myself a bit too, Kyle, because um here I sit in Miami as well with you. Um, Miami is not my number one market for what I do in financing. It's actually New England and California and Texas. Um, mainly a result of, again, my emphasis in the consumer world and specifically the natural products world, where those ecosystems are deep. You would add Colorado to that too, and per and perhaps a couple of other markets, but that's my market because so many people in consumer just don't make their products in Florida. It doesn't make sense because of transportation, logistics, and all that stuff, right? That said, I love the Miami ecosystem for financing because the founders that I do work with here are so interesting, right? Whether it's the immigrant story, whether it's hey, I came here because it's a less regulation or less cost to start up and scale up my business. And in fact, taking from your point, remember in the earlier days, Miami, the discussion would be, oh, it's a great startup place, but if you're really going to scale and grow, you have to move to San Francisco Silicon Valley, because otherwise you're not serious. And I think slowly but surely it's chipping away so that because you see it right with the pandemic and the investor community planting their flag down here and opening offices and doing that, right?

Kyle Sonlin

Yeah, no. And look, I think that there's a lot of benefits to the West Coast. And but but one one con is also incredibly expensive, right? So employees, if you're if you're setting up headquarters in San Francisco, like you might have two, three, four X as much cost as building your business somewhere else. So you you know, you almost you better be able to raise two, three, four times as much capital because you're gonna need it, you know, like like you know, between taxes and expenses, and then even just employees and and paying them, you know, employees in SF expect, you know, really strong, way out of the box salaries that I don't pay, you know, my employees yet. And and so that would be a hindrance to my company. You know, the fact that I have been able to build so much with raising so little, relatively speaking, is is part and parcel because of the fact that I picked an area where I can build a business in a way that offers a lot of those same benefits, if not more benefits, in a more cost-effective way. In a lot of ways, it's actually for me been a competitive advantage in just a dollars and cents perspective, on top of everything else.

Kyle’s Path To Tokenization

Keith Kohler

Uh Kai, I really want to thank you because unlike the first four conversations I've had and how I finance it here. We spent just a little bit over 20 minutes talking broadly about macro and wherever the energy took us. And I love that about you, and that's how you indeed you are unique. Finally, I'm gonna get to you into global settlement because I really want to give our listeners and viewers a chance to really understand specifically, in addition to all that fantastic background, the journey, because um, here you're now on global settlement, which of course is not your first go into ventures, it's it's something new. And so I'd love for you to share with us kind of what got you motivated to found global settlement, either based on all your personal professional background or the business opportunity. What lights you up?

Kyle Sonlin

Sure. No, well, I'll try to keep it short. I know that we have uh a lot on the agenda, and this is certainly your show, but um my background in technology, as we described, goes goes back a few years. I I started investing on the buy side. Um, I'm deeply inspired by Benjamin Graham, who is uh the professor to Warren Buffett at the University of Chicago. And I read The Intelligent Investor on a recommendation from a dear friend and mentor of mine and learned very much about the value of investing, specifically book value investing, right? Looking at companies for what they actually are worth infrastructurally. If you strip away the marketing, you strip away all the hype, what are these companies actually worth and trying to buy businesses that are cheaper than on a stock price value perspective, than what they're probably actually worth and making smart decisions that way. And so I grew up under that pretense. And funny enough, I had worked in tech my entire life, which has nothing to do with value investing, and they hardly own any actual physical infrastructure. Maybe today we're we're sliding back the other way with data centers and things like that. But um, but for most of my career, I've been in venture capital and I started in the crypto space. I was investing in public markets, uh, tech companies, as well as the crypto industry, and and and performed very well, I think, relative to my peers at the time. And and so I started working in the blockchain space more and more as it became a larger portion of my portfolio, as many of the earlier stage tech investors can relate. When you have a big win, you then naturally start to pay attention a little bit more. And uh, and so I started working in the space. Being in Miami, it was already a pretty large destination for the crypto industry, even in the early days. And so I started traveling the world talking about blockchain technology. I was hired by a variety of for international firms that needed kind of an American, fluent English speaker to be on panels or or sit in conversations and deliver lectures on the technology. And I was happily and willingly able to do so, despite the fact that I was pretty young at the time, but I I didn't didn't tell anybody that I was uh I was hidden about my age and I'd made plenty of jokes about it, but um but it actually frustrated me because I missed out on a ton of early digital asset crypto investment opportunities because they didn't fit my my thesis of value investing. I looked at a lot of these cryptos and said they don't own anything, and that was really hard for me to wrap my head around, and I missed out on a lot of deal. I don't know if you can relate to that at all, Keith, from from some of the two 100%, because here you go.

Keith Kohler

So you were pretty consistently saying I'm gonna continue to operate on the basis of those recommendations, and yet you were being peppered and just by being in the environment, hey dude, well, what about this? And and you're saying no, right?

Kyle Sonlin

And a lot of them worked, like like all my friends are getting you know hilariously rich on you know goofy crypto coins that I was clearly saying these are BS, they're not worth anything, but you know, that you'd rather be lucky than right to some degree, and so um, so then the market fell apart in 2017, as crypto typically does. It has you know really high highs and relatively low lows. And in that period of uh relative uh you know tranche uh in the charts, I realized like, man, Wall Street assets are are going to be come tokenized, they're gonna come on chain for sure. Um, the the ease at which you can move capital from one place to another, the speed, the the how cheaply you can do these things, the customization opportunities with automation in in building financial markets. It was very clear to me from day one that the stocks and the things that I was more familiar with were going to be coming onto these rails just from a user experience perspective.

Tokenization Explained Simply

Keith Kohler

So, can I ask you for the benefit of our audience to give the 30 seconds on what tokenization is? Sure.

Kyle Sonlin

So um tokenization is relatively simple. It's it's essentially taking the cap table or the ownership records of an asset and recording that on a digital ledger as opposed to a paper share. And that digital ledger that we record the cap table on, everybody has access to. That way, if Keith and I want to do a deal together, we all operate on the Same information and can very easily on a digital ledger make changes to that cap table. So if I want to sell my shares to Keith or if Keith wants to sell my shares to me, the compliance load in doing so is dramatically reduced because of the fact that everybody is aligned on what the cap table looks like and how the how the process goes operationally or logistically. Whereas today, I don't know, Keith, if you have any experience with this, or certainly if if any of our listeners do, but secondary sales of private assets are incredibly burdensome from a compliance perspective, even if you have both sides of the deal. Like if you and I'm having an intermediary, right? You need intermediaries, all kinds of paperwork, you need to involve a lot of different counterparties. And so we can kind of tie a lot of that up in an automated fashion. So that we still need to do the you know legal stuff to make sure that you know there's no money laundering and that there, you know, we know who's there are guardrails, right? There are guardrails, um, but those things can be enforced in a much, much more efficient way than what happens in the in the traditional industry. And so when I say tokenization, that's that's a big, big component. And there certainly can be many more avenues, but perhaps we can save that maybe for another show because I I could talk about it.

Keith Kohler

We're gonna do it, we're gonna do a show eventually specifically on tokenization. That's right. The full the full soup to max. But I appreciate your ability to synthesize it into something bite-sized and and understandable. It really allows you and me to do our deals together without the need for third-party intermediaries in managing a transaction and and then charging fees and time and all that stuff. So it's a big e-efficiency play more than anything, right? Yeah, yeah. And uh giving us the freedom to do what we need to do, and yet, as you said, still with proper compliance, with proper legality, with proper regulation, etc. And and just on that, you were instrumental in setting up a lot of the bases for regulation, right?

Regulation, JOBS Act, And Data Play

Kyle Sonlin

That's right. Yeah, no. Well, look, I think that a lot of the blockchain tokenization field intersects directly with some significant laws that were passed in 2012 by in the Obama administration. And there is a particular set of laws passed called the Jobs Act, which was the stands for the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, that allowed for a variety of fundraising regulations for businesses to access a broader range of investors. And so, with this ability to attract more investors from more places all around the world, there came a much higher burden for compliance, right? Now you have to handle way more investors from way more countries, and you know, you're gonna do it in a different way. So that efficiency that you mentioned now becomes an even bigger E because now there's even more compliance overhead and even more things that you need to take care of. So the opportunity cost of being able to just use technology that does almost all of it for you now becomes an even more attractive value proposition. And um, and so fast forward, um, this became pretty clear to me that that this industry was going to revolutionize capital markets. And so, yeah, so I built a variety of businesses in the industry, one of which my first venture back startup, I was still in university at the time, was at the University of Miami, and uh I linked up with a business partner we both know very well, Herwig Konings. And Herwig and I built a set of businesses in the industry that were, you know, my particular, you know, baby, if you will, of the business was building a data company in the space and saying, okay, I'm not a broker dealer, I'm not an exchange, I'm not a licensed guy that has, you know, billions of dollars of capital that I could call on on the cell phone. So instead of trying to compete in that space with a lot of these regulated guys, I'll be the data guy. I'll connect into all these, what I would consider kind of older individuals that don't spend a lot of time building API integrations and don't spend a lot of time, you know, providing, you know, data and reports into you know outside LPs. And they're also regulated, meaning that they there are some restrictions over how they communicate to the public. I'm unregulated. I can just be a guy that kind of loudmouths as much as possible as long as I can get the underlying information. So I started building a kind of the Bloomberg of this tokenized asset industry and grew it to about 25 billion in assets from equities, real estate, debt products, and more. And it it taught me so much about the regulations, about how they intersected with the industry as well as the the compliance processes and the vendors to work with. That now, and uh, and I want to pass it back to you, Keith, at some point because I feel like I'm sucking up all the air. No, you're good. Keep going. But now I've built a business because you know I loved I loved building a data company. But the one problem with the data business was that it was naturally a little bit voyeuristic in the sense that I wanted to be objective. I wanted to be, you know, as as you know, friends with everybody as possible because I was reliant on getting data from all these different people. You had to have the permission and build the relationships. That's right. And so that naturally kind of present put handcuffed me because I wanted to actually get my hands dirty. I was the guy that really had all the deep insights and really had the perspective that I actually felt like the industry needed me to be involved in these deals. The industry needed me to be helping structuring, helping build the technology, helping, you know, overcome some of the general hurdles that come in emerging markets. And as a data company, I was so, you know, I felt like a journalistic sense of integrity of like I can't own any of these things, I can't participate, I need to, you know, I need to be as unbiased as possible. Um, and so with global settlement, the business that I've built now over the last two years or so, the main focus has been doing just that, adding as much data into the industry to make my previous business that Herwig now runs full-time, you know, helping them be as successful as possible by creating new data sources and really helping the industry build on the success that it's had by driving real institutional adoption or enterprise adoption into this asset class. Um, and that's resulted in some pretty successful deals that we've gotten done so far. So I kind of actually have come full circle in the sense that I originally was working in the crypto space and and you know building blockchain technology. I then moved into the more capital markets financy space, and now I've come all the way back full circle into launching my own layer one blockchain called Global Settlement that is focused specifically on capital markets deals, but it feels good to be building real tech that's driving real transactions.

Keith Kohler

And capital markets is where you're starting. That's right.

Speaker

That's right.

Keith Kohler

You build a foundation that can go off into any of a number of different directions with the foundation, the baseline that you've created, right? Sure.

Kyle Sonlin

Yeah. No, it's uh it's a cool place to be. And and because I I've you know been working on this business amongst others, I I at this point have have grown a portfolio of of 12 plus in either investments or portfolio businesses that that I am in some way tangentially a part of, whether that's you know, from a semi-operational to purely investment perspective. Um, it's been really cool because I, especially here in Miami, there is so much family office and wealth management opportunity that it's given me a real crash course on capital market structuring and like how to do deals in this industry that I think in other regions there may be a little bit more, or certainly when you compare it to uh San Francisco tech scene, they kind of have one way of doing it in terms of the venture funding round structure. But there's a lot more, whether it's debt focused, whether it's syndications through SPVs, whether it's you know, a variety of other opportunities to build a capital stack that I think I've been exposed to much more being in a region like this.

Launching Global Settlement

Keith Kohler

I'm gonna come back in a second to what you say about family offices, because that's sure, I think, kind of the new frontier, right? Relative to, as you said, traditional institutional ways of raising capital. But I might come back to that because it's gonna come out in what I'm gonna next ask you, which is so you have the business plan for global settlement. When you you had your go-to-market strategy, you're you're a seasoned investor plus capital raiser in having worn different founding hats. How did you decide, or what was the thinking behind this is the capital strategy and fundraising strategy I'm gonna employ? And these are the people I'm gonna go to first. And I'm wondering if you could talk not just about that, but how it wound up. And was it how you expect it, or did it turn out somewhat different, or anywhere in between?

Kyle Sonlin

Such a good question, and probably one that we could spend an hour on. Um, that again, I I want to be mindful of my rambling just as much as anything. As much as my rambling. Well, I think that leaving leaving my previous business, the data company, and before I launched global settlement, it was a it was a tough time for me from a personal journey perspective because I had built this business with my my business partner for I sat as CEO of the data business for six plus years. Um and you know, it was a tough time. The market was really tough. Uh, and so we we were are all you know, this is like 2023, 2024, where no startups were able to fundraise.

Keith Kohler

The the economy was really not very good, not in any space, not tech, not consumer, not anywhere.

Kyle Sonlin

All the money dried up, and that hurts in a few ways, right? Not only does it make it difficult for us to raise capital and grow, but it also pretty much kills all of our customers, too, because they can't raise capital, so they're no longer going to be spending. So you lose your revenue and you lose your your equity fundraising opportunities. And so it kind of all hits you at once. And so that that ended up happening. And the decision that we needed to make was do we fire the operating team that's keeping this servicing business alive, or maybe do I take a step back and allow the business to still run on its own while I start to figure out, you know, what else can I do to either build a new business or or generate income? At some point, you gotta you gotta keep the business alive. And I wasn't gonna kill the entire business just by you know my maintenance of of my salary. And so at the same time, my mother had you know some pretty significant health problems pertaining to cancer, and and thankfully she's recovered strongly, but I was just burned out, man. You know, after six or seven years just grinding through this business and then you know, being in debt and then having you know family, family emergency stuff, I was just kind of a shell of myself. And not only that, but then also like this is my whole identity, right? I was in college as this kind of college kid that builds this business, raises some capital. Now I'm you know, mid to late 20s, and it's like, you know, what do I have to show for it? Now I'm in debt and you know, like, you know, the business is is you know still trying to work itself out. And thankfully Herway was able to take that company and and help it grow and maintain, and and he's still running that business today, but I needed to to kind of figure out what was next for me. And I didn't know where that was gonna come from, to your point, Keith. And so I decided to try to collect, if you will, as many buy-side mandates as possible. I said, okay, you know what? I'm in Miami. I have a pretty deep network because I had raised almost 5 million in equity capital for a portfolio of businesses that I was representing. You know, I had closed seven figures plus of revenue across those businesses. I knew that I had a large network of high net worth individuals, family offices, and investors. So maybe instead of bringing them a particular deal, how about I take the opposite approach and go to them and say, look, I can source you whatever you need. What are you deploying into right now? Tell me what you're looking for. And then I'll collect as many of these types of buy-side mandates as I can. And then now I can go to the sell side market and say, all right, I've got buyers for oil, I've got buyers for you know B2B enterprise businesses that are seed stage, I've got buy-side mandates for X, Y, and Z, right? And and started just kind of chasing the sell side with if I could find somebody that had capital looking to deploy into something. And uh, and so that led me into running a lot of spot commodities deals, which then kind of really helped me find my niche for global settlement was through the oil and gas, gold, and precious metals industry, because I had kind of reverse engineered where the where the buy side was coming from.

Family Offices, Side Quests, And Trust

Keith Kohler

Is it fair to say, and Kyle, I love that story. And what is it fair to say that just like perhaps founders, again, I'm gonna go back to my consumer roots, saw a white space in the market, right? You did instead of your own research, you went to the customers and said, What are you looking for these days? What what's missing? What's something you want to do more of, or perhaps you've always wanted to do that you've never could have before?

unknown

Absolutely.

Keith Kohler

That's so clever, right? And again, I think that's a big lesson for our viewers and our listeners is what are you doing up front in addition to your own thinking to survey the market, whether it's your investors, consumers, whatever, all those different, all the folks that have a role in your success and understanding what makes them tick. And I really love again the family office and high net worth folks. Do you mind sharing briefly what did they tell you that were there any things that they surprised you about that they told you they wanted or that they needed?

Kyle Sonlin

Well, I guess less less surprising with respect to the actual details of of what they wanted. More surprising was just what it consisted of, right? Like, like what hang like it consisted of me getting coffee or I drink tea, getting tea with people, talking about watches and cars for you know hours a day with a variety of different people, which again sounds pretty fun. And then in the last like three minutes, we would mention, like, oh, so then like what are you deploying into these days? And they'd be like, Oh, I'm in commercial real estate. Oh, what type of real estate? Oh, well, I'm looking for multifamily, you know, we write checks of five to ten million. Great, sounds good. All right, see ya, have a nice day. You know, like like because of the fact that that family offices, high net worth are coming off the balance sheet as opposed to having a particular mandate to deploy from their LPs, right? If you're a rich guy, you don't have to spend the money, you're just trying to do anything, right? So it's more about making friends with people and and understanding what gets them excited than it is, it's more about that kind of personal relationship, as opposed to, I think, with a venture capital fund, they raise 50 million and they have to deploy it, they have to do it that way. So they're gonna tell you right up front, I'm looking for this, I want this, I want that, this is how I'd like it. Get it to me. Whereas a family office, like you might hang out for three hours and not talk any business, but just because of the way that I'm feeling out the way the conversation's going, it just didn't feel like the right time. And then maybe you meet up again and have a conversation, or maybe then you send them a deal first and you ask them. There's it, it's a different kind of strategy with each one. And often it it requires a variety of what I like to call side quests uh before you actually get what you want, where like they'll want you to do something kind of in a random goose chase angle. And once you kind of service that and prove your worth, then you get access or or better understanding of where they're actually looking to deploy or how they're looking to deploy, or in some cases, if you bring them a good deal, it's only after you complete a side quest are they going to invest in you, even if it's kind of right up their alley.

Keith Kohler

That's such a unique insight, right? Is imagine you're spending 95% of your time on relationship building. And instead of feeling like you said, you have to fit into their thesis or their particular way of investing, whether in numbers or process or any number of things, it's just, you know what? I love Kyle. Maybe he's bringing an intangible to me, like, hey, I get to learn something. A lot of my attraction of you and Herwig and everything that I'm doing was the curiosity to learn something new, right? And to say, how could I make that work for myself and what I want to accomplish in the world of finance and financing? So I think you're bringing a nice new toy to a sandbox, right? Perhaps something they've never seen before. Holy cow, my whole life has been, as you said, family offices are off in real estate. And perhaps second, third gen, fourth gen, whatever, people in families that have traditionally had this wealth are like, well, I don't want to do what my mom and dad did. I want to look at something fresh and exciting and and be disruptive in the world. So it's very mission-aligned, isn't it?

The $75M Crypto-To-Oil Deal

Kyle Sonlin

No, it's spot on. And you know, it's like I'm known in a lot of the circles as the crypto guy. So you call me when you have a crypto problem and we'll try to solve it. Hopefully, it's within global settlements, you know. That'd be nice. But if it's not, I'm still gonna be here to help you. Why? Because if you if I'm your crypto guy, then that comes with a lot of benefits and it may come with value. And a great example of that is the the deal we just did, a $75 million uh acquisition of an oil refinery. It happened from a call. I was I got a call from a a third, you know, second or third generation family office guy that does a lot of oil and gas deals that said, Kyle, I have an LP that wants to pay me in crypto for a deal. How how how do I accept this legally? How do I accept you know tens of millions of dollars in uh a crypto wallet and and get this into cash and and do it in a way that's not gonna you know screw me over? How do I do it fast? And fortunately, with my my business partner Ryan Kirkley and I on the global settlement side, like we've built those rails because we've been meeting with these types of families, we've been meeting with these types of people all around the world. We knew this was gonna be a problem, but Alejandro didn't know necessarily that it was my business to solve this problem. He just knew that Kyle was a problem solver, and so he called me when he had a problem. And as it turned out, I had built a solution that fit that problem. We were able to get his crypto, tens of millions in crypto from uh from a Latin American family office into his wallet, into fiat currency in the matter of 10 minutes. And and that changed the game for him. And that closed his deal. Um, it resulted in a fantastic transaction in Latin America, a $75 million oil refinery, oil operator. Um, so we were able to make that full purchase and acquisition, uh, financed in in significant part with the equity stack done in the digital asset ecosystem. And uh it changed the game for him. And we're looking forward to doing more of these types of deals, but it also just proved the proved the point of like that almost felt like a side quest to him, but it just so happened that it worked out that it was right in my business's wheelhouse. But that's that's typically how it happens with family offices.

Keith Kohler

Well, it's really perfect, and the process was faster, better, higher, stronger, because had they tried to do it in traditional equity channels, months and months and months, months of paperwork, all that stuff, and even banking channels too, right? With very tight and specific guardrails. Not that there's anything wrong with them, but you solved for X, right? He needed it fast, he wanted it efficient, he already had the crypto assets available to make it happen, and off you go. And when you think about the way you're gonna glow grow global settlement, will continue to be those types of deals? Could there be other types of deals that you're working with? And now that you've you've employed, you've you know you raise the capital, you use it to get startup into the point where you are. What would be next in terms of fundraising strategy and also the products you might offer?

Cross-Border Payments And Crypto Rails

Kyle Sonlin

Yeah, it's a really, really good question. Um, you know, we're excited because the uh commodities industry is uh an international one. And international payments are probably still the biggest pain point in the financial markets today. Getting money from a regional bank account in the US, in Miami, into Western Africa, if you're to purchase gold, like that that's a really big pain in the butt for everybody involved. And by using crypto, there's no pain at all. It literally, you give me your wallet, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, you'll get that money immediately. It'll arrive immediately in your account. Now you need to get it into that, the your dollars, your local dollars. And that that does have, you know, there's there's some hurdles in doing that. But at the very least, you can custody USDT or USDC, a stable coin that's worth one dollar. You can get 10 million digital dollars in your account in a matter of a minute, and at least own that. You could go buy Bitcoin with it, or you could go cash it out at your bank or do whatever. And we we we help a lot of these individuals in getting that converted into their dollars. But it's much easier to convert a digital asset into a dollar using a money transmitter than it is sending bank to bank to bank to bank to bank ACH bank wires.

Keith Kohler

And so all these different people in the midst versus against direct.

Kyle Sonlin

And so um we're excited because we have built a technology. Um, and part of the problem in the blockchain space is that a lot of these technology providers just kind of build something almost open source, and then they say they they hope that companies build on top of them. We're taking a very different approach where we have the base layer technology and somebody could build on top of us, yes, but we're building really clear-cut applications that have the potential to make a ton of money in moving commodities, moving currencies all around the world, assisting people in doing so. It's a really, really strong business on top of really, really efficient technology.

Capital Stack: SAFEs, SPVs, Tokens, Credit

Keith Kohler

And awesome. So, as you look to for that further expansion, doing more of what you're doing, plus plus, what would be the next round of capital strategy? What does that look like for you beyond the initial seed that you are?

Kyle Sonlin

There's there's going to be a lot of different sources of capital. Um, this is kind of where I really enjoy the the uh art of doing business, in that you know, right now we have an equity fundraise process, but it's actually through a debt vehicle, through a safe note. Um, so we have multi-layered safe notes based on different valuation caps and things like that. So we have debt-based convertible equity. We will eventually do a price round, which will be straight equity. Then we also on our platform today host SPVs, so syndication, special purpose vehicles that are single asset fund structures that invest into particular deals that we're working on. So we can take management fees and carry. So there is an granular and deal-specific instead of portfolio-wide. There's a deal-specific opportunity that that's not actually our business, it's someone else's business that we're hosting and then we're we're financing through. There is on the blockchain side, there will be a blockchain-based network token, which is a capital markets vehicle at this point, as recognized with the Crypto Clarity Act that just got passed today in the US House. So there is kind of the all the token economics and things that go on on that side of the business, which again, we don't necessarily need to talk about today. Um, not to mention, we're also doing a lot of private credit work and capital on the trade finance side. So then there's actually debt-based vehicles and instruments that we're going to be launching and interacting with directly, whether that's something that we fund, whether that's something that that we empower through an SPV structure. Not to mention, finally, there's also the process that we're in launching an actual digital dollar of our own to assist all of our different clients in moving a dollar that we actually can control that it's 100% backed by real dollars and bank account and things like that. But those vehicles are actually incredibly profitable because I've got a dollar that I'm letting everybody use. I'm legally not allowed to give you any yield from the treasury products that we're backing that dollar by, right? So the the stable coin actually also will generate us cash flow. So there's so many different spinning plates from a capital markets perspective, let alone the actual yield generated from the business in in terms of revenue. Um, so it really becomes a large conglomerate very quickly. And I haven't even mentioned the idea of taking the citadel approach of launching a hedge fund that directly invests into our products or things like that, or private equity play, which theoretically could happen down the line.

Tenacity, Asia Sprint, And Team

Keith Kohler

You know what I love about these last three minutes, Kyle? The energy got elevated, the pulse rate, the celerando in music, you accelerated because you think about it, you just hand you just shared with us your vision. I think you maybe took one breath. Could it have been maybe one in between? And yet you did it with such fluidity, dare I say, musicality, that it already what I know to be true is this I gotta have your year from now, and I'm gonna say I'm gonna replay these last three minutes and say, okay, Kyle, what is your scorecard against each one of these things? Plus all the things you didn't talk about or didn't know that were gonna happen that did happen. So I really I love that, Kyle. You definitely, as you said, as advertised, brought the energy to how I finance it, and I'm very grateful for that. And as we conclude our time together, I have a tradition of asking two quick questions, which I know you can answer briefly. You said you wouldn't be able to answer briefly, but I know you can. Um what are you most proud of when you think of global settlement? What are you most proud of?

Kyle Sonlin

When I think about global settlement, yes, I'm definitely most proud of I think the tenacity to get here and the journey. Um, we have an incredible team, so the team is definitely honorable mention because these are guys that have just grinded to get this business to where it is today. And it was not just a straight line upward, and it still isn't. We're still going through bumps all of the time. And they've stuck with us with a level of faith that I think is is incredibly honorable. Um, but personally, I mean, the start of this business consisted of Ryan and myself saying, We're both broke, we know we've got a great business, and we're not going to be able to raise in the US. So we ended up flying out to Asia and just staying week to week in Asia for months. And I I put the whole thing on the credit card. I did not have enough money to cover it. I I came back with with a significant deficit on the credit card. Um, and because we had belief and because it was like, look, we got to do this, there's no other way. And and so, you know, I had spent a little bit of time in Asia, but certainly was not as intimately familiar as a couple of months, you know, staying in, you know, sometimes bug-infested hotel rooms with with another 30-year-old guy for a few months on end, which again, it was great. I love Ryan, but like we both just at the end of it really needed a hug, you know? Like, and so um, and so I think that that tenacity to believe in that vision and to go literally to the other side of the world with no agenda and just say, look, we're gonna we're gonna find a way to make this happen and figure it out and to see where we are today, where we've now raised seven figures of capital. We now have a fully functioning blockchain that I think is a leader in the market. We now have done the largest oil refinery acquisition in the the history of the blockchain industry, um, and have had some really, really cool achievements and wins. Um, that was really about one year ago. Um, we we've been building for about two years, but that that kind of real Hail Mary approach was about 12 months from, I guess a week from now will be about a 12-month anniversary. So to see how far we've come in just that short period of time and the risk that mental risk and stress that we went through to to dig out of that, um, I think that's the thing I'm most proud of.

Keith Kohler

Tenacity, right? And knowing you're gonna make this work no matter what.

Kyle Sonlin

Yeah.

Keith Kohler

I really, I really admire that. You went, you got on a plane ride, you said, I'm doing this. I didn't know when I was coming back.

Kyle Sonlin

My family either. They thought I was crazy. They're like, Kyle, when are you coming back? It's like, oh, maybe, maybe in a couple of weeks. I don't know. Like, we'll see.

Zooming Out And Playing The Long Game

Keith Kohler

And the last one, and last one, very quickly, what would Kyle today tell Kyle when he was just starting out? And I'm not gonna say at the global settlement starting point, I'm gonna say at your journey into crypto and blockchain. It's a great question.

Kyle Sonlin

I think I think this is a double-edged sword. And I think that that some investors and some some partners and people may uh not love my answer here, but it's something that that I I really appreciate about myself and and has made this business really successful on kind of that note of side quests, is be zoomed out. Don't get tunnel vision on one particular opportunity, one particular sale, or even sometimes one particular business. And it doesn't necessarily benefit everyone, but the way my brain works is that I need to be stimulated by a variety of things. I need to be curious about a variety of topics. I need to be talking to a lot of people about a lot of things. And I'm at my best when I'm kind of wheeling and dealing, and that involves having a few different bullets in the chamber, if you will, because not every person is going to want the same thing. And so I'm at my best when I'm not just pitching a one trick pony of like I've got one thing, one thing on my mind, and that's really it, because it it leaves a lot of meat on the bone with respect to somebody that may have a ton of value in your life, but. Isn't necessarily the best fit for one particular opportunity that you think is the best one today. So always making sure that you have a couple of cool opportunities, even if it's not necessarily business wise. I've been really, really blessed to join the board of Camilla's House, which is a homeless nonprofit, uh one of the largest in Florida. And I love working on the philanthropy side of the game. And so even just having that as a kind of a side hustle and doing good in the community, but it is a capital markets deal in a lot of ways, right? Donations or tax benefits, and there's there's a lot of opportunities that come with shaking hands in those types of environments. So I think that always keeping your eyes open for opportunities and not getting tunnel visioned is something that every time I've stuck by that and worked on really cool things as they come my way, it's allowed me to act from a position of leverage and get more deals closed.

Keith Kohler

You're right, Kyle. Your answer is different than others would say or perhaps even admit to, right? Because indeed, the expectation of anybody taking someone's outside money is hey, you're doing this. You're doing this, you're executing, you're doing just this blockchain style of business, you're doing this just consumer product style of business. And sometimes if they even knew that you had, as you said, your side quests going on, it could change their fundamentally there if they want to invest or they're wanting to do more, right?

Kyle Sonlin

You know, criticism. I've I've gotten that feedback before, and it's like, look, if you you're not cool with that, then that's fine. I'll find somebody else. You know, it's like what a blessing, right?

Keith Kohler

That you can still be you with the contrarian viewpoint, and there's still a market and an investor for you.

Kyle Sonlin

The results speak for themselves, bro. You know, you you can't that's what I'm saying. It's like you gotta walk the talk. Everybody wants to do X, Y, and Z. And it's like, hey, the the reason that this oil deal closed, which is the biggest deal in the industry, was because I work on this guy on a variety of other things, and he called me for this problem to solve. You know what I mean? Like he didn't even know much about my business to know that I was the right solution. It was because of all of the ecosystem networking and and variety of value add that I've provided that generates more business for me, right? It's the it's kind of the Elon Musk strategy of having a bunch of different businesses that complement each other. And I think that that's the the family office game versus the venture capital game, right? When family office back to that, yeah, it's across the portfolio, and that's where you can get that compounding interest.

Closing Gratitude And Next Steps

Keith Kohler

You tied that back perfectly to exactly where I was gonna go, is your way of being, both business and personal, are as you're sharing and demonstrating, aligned with a family office style, private and non-institutional investor who can look at you and embrace you more broadly than the others, not because they they don't want to, but because they have to look at things a certain way because of their LPs or their investment thesis or they're publicly traded or whatever, whatever that might be. And I think it's just such an interesting thing. So for all of our viewers and listeners out there, it's such an interesting journey when you look at Kyle's one, both business and personal wise, and then in addition, how that looking at family off assignment with individuals, friends and family in a very different way, right? Um, that has worked for you in you being the full person you are, dare I say, in full self-expression, too, because I know you're not gonna hold back.

Kyle Sonlin

So I try to be genuine, you know. You it's it at least it comes out like like you can like me or dislike me, but at least you, you know, like you gotta respect that uh it's it's at least I'm logically consistent, you know what I mean? I'm not I'm not trying to fool anybody.

Keith Kohler

Yeah, and I think that I'll end on just that word of saying there's something about consistency, is when I'm financing people, when I'm talking to people, some people, some of them I might not find all that interesting to work with or even desirable to work with. And yet if they show up consistently and I know what to expect, I can I can oftentimes sell that and work with it. So really want to thank you, Kyle, today for your time. And as you said, you really brought the energy. And again, I'm I'm giving you that open invitation. I think a year from now is gonna make sense. Let's do it because those that particular three minutes or so in you sharing your vision of product and scale and fundraising is gonna be exciting to say. Check, check, chat. Oh, by the way, Keith, there's this whole five other things I didn't mention in that Attelarondo moment that I also accomplished. So can't wait to talk to you a year from now. I don't know what episode that's gonna be. This was episode five. Let's see what that works out being. But I can't wait. And uh again, Kyle, thank you for your time and all your contributions today, not just in your business and your own personal journey, but that incredible viewpoint about macro and specifically about Miami Tech, which we know and love. So thank you again today.

Kyle Sonlin

Keith, I you know, I have to send the thanks right back to you. You've been such a great friend, you've been a really, really wonderful mentor in my life, and you do deserve a lot of credit. You've invested in multiple of my companies at this point. So if anybody sees the the kind of eccentricity of Kyle and recognizes that there's some value there, it is you. You've been one of my earliest believers and uh a close, close friend of mine, not only for many years now, but I'm looking forward to many years to come. So it's it's an honor to be here with you. It's a fantastic conversation, and and from uh sincerely from my end, thank you for for everything you're doing for the community, for empowering entrepreneurs like myself and others. And uh, you know, I just I think what you're doing is really, really cool here. So it I'd be honored to come back whenever you'd invite me.

Keith Kohler

Brilliant. And I think now it's a reminder to me to really step into my vision and measure where I'm gonna be a year from now. And I'll get my own report card too.

Kyle Sonlin

Yeah, send that to me. When you do it, I want to I want to watch it.

Keith Kohler

We'll keep hold each other accountable.

Kyle Sonlin

And I think let's do it. We'll come back in a year and be like, all right, Keith, let's watch both of our clips and you can grade me on mine, and I can grade you on yours.

Keith Kohler

I'll have to record a vision outside of this and have it ready to play. I'll be ready. I think my producers are going, wow, extra work on that, but that's that's okay. We're gonna be good. Um, again, Kyle, thank you so much. Can't wait to see you soon and uh celebrate even more of your success.

Kyle Sonlin

Yes, sir. Appreciate it. Take care.

Keith Kohler

Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of How I Financed It. I encourage you to reach out to me on LinkedIn at Keith Kohler1, and I look forward to connecting there.