How To Drop Out Of College And Become a Stand Up Comedian with Kyle Vamvouris

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk Kyle, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Hey, thanks for being here. It's great to connect with you. I know that we're part of the same mastermind group, so I always like to get to know some folks as the new guy by inviting people on the show and getting to know a little bit more about them and their business and what they got going on. So I'm glad we got a few minutes to hang out here. So I love telling people's stories on this show and for some context for our listeners that we can back up a little bit and help our listeners better understand a little bit more about your backstory and what really brought you to present day with what you're doing.

Sebastian Rusk

Yeah, so depends on how far you want to go back.

Kyle Vamvouris

But I everyone always says that. I guess I should I should I should always say wherever back begins for you. Sometimes it's high school, sometimes it's college, sometimes it's after that. So, yeah, wherever you'd like to start.

Sebastian Rusk

Yeah, let's start like probably the real beginning of my career. So I dropped out of college to do stand-up comedy at the age of 22 years old. I did that five years. And while I was a stand-up comedian, I was working at a gym, selling gym memberships during the day. It was the perfect job because during the day I could sell gym memberships, in the evening I would do stand-up. And one thing leads to another, and I ended up getting an opportunity to work as an entry-level salesperson at a large software company. And it went great. I was cold calling, got promoted to an account executive, which was closing deals. I left that company to be an account executive at another startup company. Then I wrote a book called Cold to Committed. That's about how to do cold outreach or cold calling, cold email, things like that. From there, I started running teams. So I ran an SDR team at an early stage startup company that was venture backed in San Francisco. I had a lot of success there. We raised multiple rounds. It was a lot of fun. From there, I went and ran the inside sales team at another company. I've written three books total now. I started my business in 2020. And that is really the quick high level overview of my career.

Amazing. So what drove you to drop out of college and start doing comedy, which is a correct, terrible career choice from one comedian to another?

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So I started comedy when I was 17. So I did it all, not all through high school, but 17. So I was a junior in high school. It's my passion. I love it. I wanted to be an actor originally. I always had a really good sense of humor. And then, I got to the point to where I fell in love with comedy and said, this is what I want to do. The local comedy club would let me do open mics at 17. So I started doing it at 17 and it's just what I loved ever since. So it's not like I was doing well at school. I was in college just doing my best. And that best was also the worst. So it was a pretty easy decision. I wasn't going to class half the time anyway. So it was like, why am I even doing this thing? Tried to hide it, not tell anybody like my parents or anything for a little bit. But of course, like that comes out when you don't go to school ever. So, yeah, it was more of just the passion for being on stage that got me to drop out of college and I wasn't doing well.

So are you still doing comedy now? No, I don't. I stopped.

I stopped pretty, it was a very conscious decision, but as my career, I was progressing in my career as a software salesperson. Yeah, I got to this point where it was like, hey, do you want to kind of half-ass this passion of yours and focus on earning an actual income or Do you want to focus on earning actual income? And comedy did a lot for me as a young man, like trying to figure out my voice and where I fit in the world and also, like, better understanding what I believe. And it felt disingenuous to half-ass comedy when it had done so much for me. So it was a very conscious decision. I decided to stop.

Do you miss it?

Yeah, I would say I get asked that a lot. Miss, I think, is a strong word because I still speak a lot. I speak on stage quite a bit. Humor is infused into everything that I do. It's a big part of my personality. I miss the craft a bit, sure, but I have an outlet for it. So I wouldn't say it's like a longing to do it again. It's more of I really enjoyed that time of my life. Would I do it again? Yeah, I absolutely would. But I also have an outlet to express that creative side of me. So I'm okay in that sense.

Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at too. I started doing it about three years ago because I was terrified of it. I've been speaking for 15 years that I can go crush a keynote, but go do an open mic for five minutes in front of 50 drunk people, forget about it. And that was just incongruent to me. I got a buddy that started the Miami comedy scene here and he kind of set me up and he was like, Hey man, come out to an open mic next week. And I did. And I was third up in the showcase, not the open mic. And I crushed seven minutes and I was like, I got this. only to realize the last thing that I want to do is open mics on a Tuesday night at 10 o'clock at night. Like that's just the last thing I want to do. And I know that's a big faux pas in the comedy world that you got to pay your dues, et cetera. But I'm like, I don't know. I think I'm a little bit further along. than most communicators. And when I really sat there and asked myself why I'm doing comedy, I think it's a matter of being able to contribute to my existing craft as a communicator. I don't think it's about being able to say I'm going to be the next, you know, top big name out there with a Netflix special. I actually have no desire to do that. I have one desire to be funny when I'm on stage and be funny with what I'm doing. And that's really it. You know what I mean? It's kind of an interesting, interesting world.

Did you get like caught up in it at all where you started like really dedicating yourself and you came to that realization later or throughout the whole time you were doing it was very conscious for you that you're doing this to become a better communicator on stage?

You know, I kept on asking myself, why am I doing this? Because the open mics are miserable. I mean, miserable, especially in Miami. Cause they're unconventional places. Like most comedy spots. It's, you know, the, the craft is getting people to laugh in Miami. It's getting people to shut the fuck up so you can make them laugh. So that, that was the, that was the big challenge. And I guess Miami is such an up and coming scene that It's still gaining its traction and its wheels. I mean, I think the only big name that's now a big name that's come out of this is Marcelo, who's now on Saturday Night Live, came out and he started very young, like you did, at like 18. And I remember doing open mics with him. I'm like, that kid's got it. And he had been opening for Tim Dillon for quite some time. And all the comics that I would see at open mics were like, that kid's on his way out of town. And what we didn't know was in a comics dream ended up landing at Saturday Night Live on every major league baseball commercial these days. But there hasn't been a lot of talent. I think that. When I when I started to ask myself, you know. Do I really want to do this? Am I interested in it? You know, what feels really good Kyle is, is when people say, what do you do? And you say, I'm a podcaster and a comedian, both terrible career choices, but I got lucky, you know, people view you through a different lens with comedy. And I've always had a knack for being funny, like yourself, like wanting to be funny and fight, try, how do I infuse comedy and funny into every area of life? Not just when I go and perform, you know,

Yeah, I think it's definitely more of a mindset or maybe even a lens to see the world through. Like I feel very fortunate that I find the vast majority of situations, I find the humor in it. And that's a really beneficial skill to have both as like a comedian, because then you can use that as inspiration to write material, but also just allows you to go through life with more of a jovial attitude and not so caught up in I don't know, like all these situations that can kind of be stressful. It doesn't mean like I have moments where I felt very stressed or very overwhelmed, but I was able to still see the humor in those experiences. And it wasn't a situation where it was like, oh, I'm going to look back on this and laugh. It was like, no, I'm laughing now. I hate it, but I'm also laughing now. And I think that's a very helpful mindset to have when you're going through life because there are going to be ups and downs. It's, you know, at least I always, at least, especially as a young person, always had that part of me that could laugh at whatever the chaos in my life was at the time. And that gave me a bit of power.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, also being able to laugh when you're not supposed to be laughing. I thought that was always, those are always a good time as well. Absolutely. Yeah. So fast forward to present day, what are you deeply passionate about today and excited about and what really, you know, get you going every day?

Yeah, I mean, a couple of primary things, like probably one of my deeper interests today is philosophy, both Eastern and Western philosophy. I've been doing a lot of kind of deep research over the past year into that and really trying to better understand just different frameworks for thinking and different frameworks for seeing the world and the nature of reality. So I'd say that's one of them that I'm deeply interested in, but I'd consider that more of a hobby. Um, and then there's my work today. Like I love speaking. I'm a, I, uh, love being on stage and speaking to groups of people. I work with fast growing companies that are building sales teams. I have a team, um, that also works with those. Like I, we have a great team. We work with really fast growing companies. So it's been a lot of fun in that regard too.

Cool. What are you excited about for 2025? What do you got on the, on the chalkboard and, uh, to, to, to tackle in 2025?

Yeah, really, probably the biggest thing is I'm making speaking a much more center point of what I do. Occasionally now. OK, so yeah, maybe you and I should share notes here because I do it. I do it a decent amount, but not like not a crazy amount like I would love to be in a position where I'm speaking at least once a month would be great for me. So next year is really a big push for me to start developing More of that side of my life i've been i've been speaking for a very long time my dad took me to toast matches when i was nine years old i've always been on the stage my heroes growing up were less brown tony robbins. You know t.r becker like the great great orators were always big idols of mine even as a young teenager. So i know i'm stepping more into that world next year that's what i'm probably looking the most forward to.

Yeah, same here. I actually joined a program a couple months back to figure out the whole paid speaking business game, because it's extremely frustrating to have been speaking this long. It's been almost 15 years now. And while I have done a tremendous amount of speaking, most of these entrepreneur and business events aren't paying speakers. It's all exposure. And while that has worked decent for being able to not necessarily sell from the stage, but deliver a talk and your customers are probably in the audience, it's still unpredictable. And what really takes the wind out of my sails is going and doing a gig like that. And you don't close any deals. Yeah. So when I started to make that distinction, I signed up with a company called the speaker lab. And, um, they really helped me get in there and define my signature talks. And what happened was I had to remove everything podcast away from my talks. I had to get complete, cause Aflac is not going to bring you in for their national conference to talk about the power of SAS for your business. It's just not going to happen, but they will come in and like my signature talk, started with, you know, how I already, I already mixed a lot of life and motivation into the world of podcasting and the impact it can have on your life and your business. But I just solely narrowed it down to just motivation with a splash of comedy of basically helping people to think differently, stop playing small, to live, in their purpose, on purpose. And then really figuring out who that audience is, because there's like five genres you're going to go after. It's education, colleges, universities, military and government corporations, um, professional associations, and I forget the last one. Maybe that's the only four. So you got to find where your world fits out. I narrowed it down to corporations and business associations on there, but really going like, soul focused on what does it look like? Like I'm not doing a gig unless there is a budget and they're paying speakers and you can get booked to go and do an actual keynote. And that took a while to understand that distinction. Like these days, everybody wants to be a speaker. Like, oh, what else is new? Let me guess. You're a speaker, you're an entrepreneur, and you're writing a book. Like, let me guess. You know, I'm trying to separate myself far from that crowd, but much like yourself, I'm a born communicator and the platform is where I feel most alive and where my most, I can feel like I can give the most impact of, you know, so.

Yeah, yeah. Well, is that crowd even that big? You know, like when you say like everybody wants to be a speaker, entrepreneur, writing a book, the vast majority of entrepreneurs I interact with don't speak or have books. Right? Well, it just seems to be like that.

It seems to, I think COVID did it when everybody decided, well, I'm not going to go back to work. I'm going to become an entrepreneur. And I was thinking about writing a book and I would love to speak on stages. And my, my, in my world, it's like, I don't want to start a podcast. I love guesting on podcasts. So to which I reply, who doesn't? Yeah. Yeah. Of course. You know, but that's interesting. We'll definitely have to stay in touch and compare notes on, you know, what that all looks like because much, because that, that, that, while the speaking world is very big, it's very small at the same time. And it affords the opportunity to be able to, hey, I get booked for a gig. And they're like, do you know any other great speakers? Getting that referral base is vital. And we feed each other back and forth. And it's like, hey, what's your calendar look like? What's my calendar look like? What referrals can we do back and forth on there? So yeah, I'm stoked to see how that unfolds. Well, dude, man, it's been great to connect with you here. This is what, you know, life is all about. And business is all about is being able to better understand people on a platform like a podcast makes it makes my life a little bit easier because I interview people. I use it a lot for business, too, which. if people say, I want to start a podcast, I'm like, cool, let's get you on my podcast and talk about what you do. And then we can figure that rest of the details out, um, later on here. So that's kind of been my play. It's actually what I teach too. If you're looking to sell something to specific people, get them on your podcast and interview them. And I think that's something that's going to be here for, for quite some time, because it'll give you the opportunity to stroke people's ego, get to know them a little bit. And then, you know, there's an opportunity to identify it. Yeah. Um, but it's been great to connect with you here. Any final thoughts for our listeners?

Likewise. No, no. I just appreciate you taking the time. It was nice meeting you. This was a lot of fun.

Appreciate it. Thanks again, man. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you subscribe to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, Launchlab.com Studios. We'll talk to you next time.