Starting in 2022 as a 15 year old, Kacper began to study the complex and tedious systems of local government entities. Kacper Staniszewski founded Kepper Recovery a couple of months later and continues to work hard to help return money from government entities to their rightful owners.
After Kacpers father was spammed with what’s now his biggest competitor, he figured out how to rightfully return his father’s money to his pocket, now he does it for others.
Kacper grew up in Chicago, IL, and continues to balance his company, sports, and school along with his summer job as a golf caddie. Kacper has plans on growing his company into further financial services surrounding the mortgage area.
What is Kepper Recovery all about?
Kepper Recovery LLC helps identify sums of unclaimed refunds or unclaimed payments and notifies prospective clients of our discovery, once we’re hired, we work diligently on recovering the sum owed to our client.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company.
Today, our biggest competitor used to reach out to my father regarding an uncollected government refund. At first, my father continued to throw out the letters we continued to receive from them but one day he told me to take a further look at it. A couple of phone calls later that same day I knew there really was an uncollected refund for my dad and it was a lot more complicated and tough to really locate where it’s from more likely, recovering the refund.
After a couple of months of studying the systems I was able to locate where the refund is from and it did take a couple of tries but I was eventually able to recover it for my father.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
- Staying focused and just working hard.
In my opinion, the most important skill that is needed to become a successful entrepreneur is to be able to work hard on whatever your goal is. – I was never the smartest in my class or even near the biggest in my industry but I did have one trait, the ability to work hard, I worked hard on my company, and at first it was a struggle, and a lot of regrets but I was eventually able to get it propelled and it quickly kicked off. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t the biggest or smartest in any industry, if you work hard in any aspect of life, you’ll eventually get the results you worked for.
2) The ability to stay calm under tough and hard situations.
While starting to receive my first couple of clients it was a struggle as I really wasn’t prepared and realized that there was a lot more that I had to learn. There was a huge delay for a couple of my first clients but those long nights of reading, struggling and learning I was able to learn from my mistakes- The calmer you are during the harder situations the better you’re able to comprehend and learn from your mistakes.
3) The ability to fix your own mistakes and grow from them.
There will be a lot of mistakes that you’ll run into when starting a company, even if you have a very well thought out business plan. You have to be open to them and tackle them in different ways, there’s a lot of ways to fix a problem but your job as an entrepreneur is to figure out the most convenient and easy way for your business.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
I plan on staying in the governmental refund service area for a bit but as I continue to grow and learn I plan on expanding into different services surrounding the financial industry. The best way to grow the business is to keep the client happy. As long as our clients are happy with our services, we’ll be able to grow and take more financial risks to grow into the planned services.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
As I started my business it was a bit hard to gain clients, especially because my biggest competition had a lot more years of experience and employees. I was a single teenager from Chicago with a single refund of experience under my belt going against a 30 employee company with 25 years of experience. What I began to do is start to charge a much lower fee compared to my competition and work on a contingency basis- meaning that we only charge our fee if we’re able to successfully recover the refund, there was no upfront payment for prosperous clients.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
- The first and probably the biggest mistake that I made when starting was the mistake of not being prepared enough. After all the studying, learning, and long nights of trying to comprehend- I thought that I was ready to start but to my mistake, there was a lot more to work on.
- The second mistake that I made was not having and meeting all of the requirements of the government entities, which ultimately led to delays.
- The mismanagement of business expenses and income. I was spending a lot more than what the business was making at the start. Although I had to invest a lot of personal money, I was spending a lot more than the budget that I set for myself and wasn’t putting enough time into the business.
What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
My first business idea came not too long before I started Kepper. During the Covid- 19 pandemic outbreak I started to notice lots of gyms and public workout areas close. I began to research and started to sell gym equipment online. It was pretty successful financially speaking but as Covid began to slow down so did the business.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
I personally believe that a clean and organized space to work in is one of the most important and crucial reasons to be productive. – If you have a messy desk and don’t know where some paperwork you put went that could possibly even take a couple of minutes out of your day, which easily could add up to an hour of your day that you could’ve spent on gathering more clients, cold calling, etc.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business?
I love helping others in recovering the money that our clients haven’t known about. After having a successful recovery case I usually get a “thank you” email or text which really helps and motivates me to give that feeling to others.
What is your favorite quote?
“Failure is always an option.” – Adam Savage
What valuable advice would you give new entrepreneurs starting out?
You will fail, no matter how well thought out your business plan is or how hard you work in the beginning. There will always be something you didn’t learn, or simply missed during the startup process. The most important part is if you continue to learn and overcome after the mistake(s) or if you choose to quit.
Another important thing when starting any business is just having connections with people. I started to work as a caddie at a private country club which is how I was able to meet a lot of successful entrepreneurs, attorneys, doctors, etc. that now only fed me ideas and information but helped give me a lot of motivation.
In terms of new and young entrepreneurs I would tell them to stay away from any drugs of any sort including laying off a couple of parties. Although it’ll be hard seeing your friends partying and enjoying themselves on a Friday night, you have to sacrifice a couple of nights to work and propel your startup. Trust me, it’s worth it and if you enjoy what you do, you won’t even mind it.
What is your definition of success?
Success can be defined in a lot of different ways. My personal definition of success is completing and achieving all of your goals that you’ve set for yourself along with surpassing them and possibly going ever further in any goal you’ve set for yourself.
How can readers get in touch with you?
Readers can get in touch with me through my Linked- In or reach me at my email, kacper@keppertax.com
