Thought Partnership for Business Leaders & Investors
Testudo partners with founders, executives, and investors on strategic priorities, talent management, and the personal operating rhythm to build stamina to win the long game – so results compound, and you still like your life (and your company) years later.
Testudo's offering is bespoke to each client's needs and typically involves two or more of the following focus areas.
Strategic priority-setting for founder/CEOs & fund managers: selecting the right priorities – few enough to execute well – and growing at a pace matched to resources. Current focus areas include preparing organizations for the AI future; transitioning from the “raising money” past to the “making money” present; exploring exit options; and product positioning strategy for firms selling to investors.
Talent management coaching for founders and investment firm heads challenged with recruiting/retaining the A-team and ensuring senior team members' daily duties align with authentic strengths, while navigating the emotions of high-ego talent. Address common patterns: settling for B-players to “get back to the real job,” compensation systems that fail to motivate ownership mindset, and procrastination in making needed personnel changes.
Unlock the talent to use your talent: executive coaching for high-ability individuals who feel they're performing below their underlying talent levels, usually due to some discrete issue in the relationship to work (e.g. chronic procrastination, role misalignment with authentic personality, analysis paralysis, overstretch from inability to set boundaries at work or at home, etc.).
Personal coaching for proven achievers seeking greater satisfaction and renewal, including potential transition to a new role or career. Address work addiction, success dysmorphia, toxic inner critic, and family life challenges through deep inner work and formal coaching methods for emotional breakthroughs.
Testudo Advisory is a trusted thought partner for executives, investment managers, and business owners seeking to build thriving businesses and more balanced lives. Testudo blends strategic rigor with emotional intelligence, fostering enduring value and personal fulfillment.
Core Tenets
Patient Discernment
Nuanced Candor
Open-Minded Discipline
Authentic Wholeness
Patient Discernment
Markets at all-time highs, crypto fortunes, meme stocks, and AI are leaving many ambitious achievers adrift in get-rich-quick thinking, obscuring a fundamental truth: quality takes time. Building the A-team takes time. Earning trust takes time. Selling your company takes time. Enduring value is often built steadily: product quality, reliability, and reputation compound. Grow at a pace that protects quality rather than folding to pressure to chase hypergrowth; when growth outruns your operations, your customers – and your brand – foot the bill.
Nuanced Candor
Clients value Testudo's compassionate candor: we waste zero time on telling them what they want to hear. Real-world leadership lives in nuance – where the “80-90% version” of a management axiom is often far better advice than the extreme “100% version” designed to go viral. We help clients navigate complex strategy and people decisions with detailed, actionable guidance – not one-note book titles. CEOs should mostly project confidence, but not always; calibration is key to long-term credibility.
Open-Minded Discipline
Testudo works best with clients who combine openness to new ideas with the follow-through to implement them – a rare pairing to find in one personality but powerful when cultivated. We partner with leaders willing to investigate uncomfortable insights – about strategy, teams, and personal operating rhythm – and then apply the disciplined repetition required to make change stick. The curiosity to question old patterns and the rigor to build new ones is what separates clients who transform from those who dabble.
Authentic Wholeness
Business outcomes are often inseparable from the passions and patterns of the whole person driving them. Testudo integrates strategic insights with emotional intelligence; we help leaders align their day-to-day roles with authentic strengths and interests, observing that failure to do so tends to lead to mediocre results over time. There is no prize for winning financially while losing your health, relationships, or joy; Testudo helps you build a high-performing business and a life you actually want to live.
Frequently Asked Questions
Drawing on 13 years of hedge fund investing, plus insights from advising business owners in a wide variety of industries, Kyle Davis has become a Swiss Army Knife for CEOs and their teams on all matters strategic, financial, and behavioral.
- 13 years of hedge fund investing, observing outperforming CEOs and identifying the patterns behind investment "stories" that consistently disappoint or unravel
- 13 years of "sparring" in a top-tier employee culture, including aiding the transition to a best-on-the-Street compensation system
- 10 years of investor communication advisory, as editor of a semi-annual investor letter
- 5 years conducting personality interviews of potential investment team and senior management hires
- 2 years coaching education at Aletheia, designed to allow individuals to "unfold" deeply held emotions in 1-hour coaching sessions
- Industry generalist, investing experience in nearly every sector + coaching clients in industries including hedge funds, venture capital & private equity funds, software, clean energy, travel, media, business services, healthcare services, and real estate.
- Personal transformation, Father of 3 young children with 7+ years of sobriety from alcohol, 800+ hours of individual therapy unpacking emotional bottlenecks, and hundreds of hours helping other sober high performers do the same.