Kyle Akin – Crescendo Spirits

Kyle Akin is a veteran, business owner and a Grants Pass native. Listen in as Kyle openly shares his successes and challenges during the pandemic and his encouraging words to business owners in the community and those who want to own a business in the future. To learn more about Crescendo Spirits and their fine products ➡️https://www.crescendospirits.com/ Also, be sure and head over to your liqueur store in town and pickup some of their fine products. 😃 Transcription Brian: Kyle Akin is a marine veteran who went to school to be a civil engineer. He fell in love with the Rogue Valley back in 2008 and knew he needed to create an opportunity greater than that of an employee if he wanted to live here. So he started Crescendo Spirits and then a few years later, Double Taps and Grants Pass. He's been living in the Rogue Valley on and off since 2008 with the goal of eventually living here full time when Kyle married his wife, a GP local six years ago, he's been living here since. On top of all that they'll be having their first son in the upcoming weeks ahead. That's exciting. Kyle Aiken, welcome to Grants Pass VIP. Kyle: Thanks for having me on the show. Brian: Good deal. So other than what I already mentioned, is there anything else that you'd like to say about yourself and where people might know you from? Kyle: Oh, just that I've been going to Club Northwest and I'm sure a lot of people know me from there and obviously from working at Double Taps for two years, a lot of people have come through and we've had a lot of events and we raised a lot of money for local efforts and events. With Double Taps we really tried to integrate ourselves into what Grants Pass was doing. Might knw me from there. Brian: Very cool. So, how did you end up here? What's your life story up until this point? Kyle: Well, I grew up in Northern California and native Mendocino County, five and a half hours from here. Still have a mother that lives down in Laytonville, then joined the Marine Corps at 17. Traveled the world a bit, was a Marine Embassy Guard was in the Marine Corps for five years overseas for about seven. After I got in the Marine Corps. I drove to Panama, went to Florida State there because I wanted to go back to Panama after the Marine Corps and worked on getting my degree. My Dad always kind of had that plan for me growing up, "you're going to go serve your country, you're going to earn the right to vote and do right by your country. Then after that you're going to use those benefits and go to college and get a degree." That was the life path I had for me for years. Got my civil engineer degree from Florida State to work for a large civil engineering firm there, Jacobs Engineering. Then I transferred back to the Pacific Northwest. So I went back to Bellevue Washington. And while I was up there working doing a lot of construction management stuff, civil engineering, since that's my emphasis, discovered the Rogue Valley because I had a childhood friend that was living down in Talent and came on down there and discovered what a summer was like again. You know, because living in Seattle, you don't get a you don't get a lot of summer and going from places like Florida, where it's sunshine all day, and then go on and work at night for six months in Bellevue, Washington. In the middle of winter, kind of a bit of a contrast. That summer I was rolled on down here on my motorcycle and saw my buddy and that was 2007 and fell in love with the place and decided I need to learn how to be down here. You need to figure it out. So I got a civil engineering job down in a Rogue Valley and moved down shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, the market crashed, shortly thereafter, right around 2008-2009. But I was in my master's program got an MBA from Southern Oregon University. In the meantime, I got laid off from my civil engineering job because all the construction kind of disappeared, got picked up by another company. Actually worked for a lot of companies in the interim as a civil engineer and went to Yosemite worked as a civil engineer doing the Historic Ahwahnee Upgrade and Yosemite lived there for about a year and got another opportunity to come back to Grants Pass, come back to the Rogue Valley and work on another construction project that was nearby. Discovered Club Northwest, meet my wife and I fell in love. Shortly thereafter the project ended and I had to go to Eugene and my wife and I pursued a long distance relationship while I was in Eugene working on another construction project and decided it was time. I was in my mid 30s by then, and decided it's time for me to raise a family, you know, meet a wife settle down and wanted to do all that. So I made a stand in Eugene because I was tired of relocating because I had had over 20 addresses and 14 years. So I made a stand, bought a house in Eugene, and that's where I started Crescendo Spirits. I had a lot of people who believed in me that were willing to work with me and invest in my company and we now have 60 investors and Crescendo Spirits, over the years since then that was 2013 that I started it. It started up in Eugene and all time I wanted to still be down here in the Rogue Valley. My wife and I finally decided to go for it. She's a fourth grade Elementary School Teacher in Rogue River. It's just been great move back down rented out my house and Eugene and on December 15, 2017 started Double Taps, because I wanted to have something to do here and I wanted to contribute and be part of the Grants Pass community professionally. I mean, I was with Crescendo Spirits, you know, via bars and restaurants and liquor stores carrying my Distilled Spirits doing different shows and events, but I wanted something more personal more local, and that's where Double Taps came from. So we decided to start that, right there in the Grants Pass Shopping Center, here we are two years later. And unfortunately, Double Taps didn't really survive the COVID thing with me because I found that Crescendo Spirits has kind of exploded on a different scene. Also we're about to have a baby, and Double Taps, probably about some 75% of my workload was working with Double Taps. So while it was fascinating and great to meet everybody, a lot of customers really loved our spot. I really found that between COVID and reopening, and so forth, it just it was time for somebody else to take up that torch. So we're in the middle of selling the business to a friend of mine, who is going to be reopening it somewhere in Grants Pass. So we're not telling anybody where yet because obviously, we want to make sure everything works out right. But you'll be seeing Double Taps soon, it just won't be under my management. But in the meantime, know that we are doing well here in Grants Pass and we're soon to have a son. And that Crescendo Spirits is still alive and well and carried in all your local spots. Brian: That's fabulous. What a story. So when you first started Crescendo Spirits, had you ever had any type of business before? I know you had worked as a civil engineer at all these different places? Or was that a completely new thing for you? Kyle: I come from a family of entrepreneurs, there's was always that hidden kind of impetus to do something on my own. And I always thought that God had that intention for me all along, and I strongly believe in a path that's is a destiny, if you will. I believe that things reveal themselves through different parts of your life. And so for me, I'm construction management being a civil engineer. I love it, absolutely love being outside working in heavy infrastructure construction. We've done dams, we've done bridges. We've done wastewater plants, roads, you name it. But the problem is, is that it's very much a nomadic lifestyle for a person in that occupation. With me wanting to start a family and have kids, and really get known in a community and develop my relationships within a community, that job profile didn't really meet that. So it required that I think outside the box, that I learned what it's like to really strike out on your own. And don't get me wrong, there's always been…for years I've been working on putting those tools in my toolbox, you know, interviewing all the different business owners that I've worked with over the years getting my MBA from Southern Oregon. Learning how to do the marketing and learning how to do a business plan, and so forth, taking care of my finances, developing relationships, everything has essentially been towards that end. It's not something that you just wake up one day and go, "I'm gonna own a business." Like, in order to properly open a business, you really, it takes time and thought, and setting up the right thing. If you want to be successful, and you just, I mean, I'm sure there are people that wake up one day and just go, you know, I want to do something and they go do it and they're successful. That's great. That's not how my personality works. I want to be as prepared as I can. So I take the classes and I get the life experience. But yeah, I always kind of fully expected that one day I was going to have to do my own thing. If I was going to end up getting what I wanted out of life. That did eventually come in Eugene when I made my stand, and I knew I was going to have to pay the price, and sure enough, the project ended and there wasn't anything else in that particular area that I could go to. So that necessitated the need to start an opportunity. Brian: So why liquors, why spirits, what led you in that direction? Kyle: A lot of it is taken a look at your life and what do you do well in your life, and what have you learned in your life, how people reacted to things in your life. And in my case, one of the things I've done for years was make homemade limoncello which in of itself is a