Sobriety, Spirituality, & Sales Ep. 30 - Kyle Hunter

**Clint Peake** (0:00)
Good morning, good morning, we are running a little bit late this morning, apologize for the delay. Super excited to welcome our guests today, but first of all, this show does not exist without our sponsor, Mike Bader, State Farm Agency, First and River. And if you're looking for an insurance quote, if you just wanna compare rates, Mike is a great resource. The ladies in his office are fantastic, they're very responsive. Reach out to him for all your insurance needs. And Kyle, good morning, Kyle Hunter, we welcome you. We're a little bit late, I apologize for the delay. We had some technical issues.
So.

**Kyle Hunter** (0:33)
No problem, man, can you hear me all right?

**Clint Peake** (0:36)
Actually, I'm having a hard time hearing you.

**Kyle Hunter** (0:38)
Okay, let me see if I can make some adjustments here and see what we can do.

**Clint Peake** (0:42)
I can hear you now.

**Kyle Hunter** (0:44)
Okay, perfect. All right, maybe I need that. Is that better?

**Clint Peake** (0:48)
That is better, yeah. And first, we got you on the cell phone today because we're having some technical issues.
How's your day going?

**Kyle Hunter** (0:57)
Well, thank you guys so much. Yeah, great. Thank you guys so much for having me. This is an absolute pleasure.

**Clint Peake** (1:02)
Absolutely. And you've been on some podcasts already, right? I mean, you've got a book that you're promoting, and just your story is incredible. We had an opportunity to hop on a Zoom call a few months back, and I graciously agreed to come on the podcast, which we appreciate.
I think people need to hear stories like yours, people that are in a desperate situation, people that are in a situation where they feel like there's maybe no alternative to turning their life around, right? I mean, your story is a tremendous story of resiliency, of resurrection, of just, you know, I'll let you just take it away, man. Like, what does Kyle's life look like now compared to what it looked like five, 10 years ago?

**Kyle Hunter** (1:44)
Yeah, let's just jump right into it. Yeah, I mean, today, I'm a business leader, I'm a general manager of a car dealership, just released my first book that did better than I expected. We got a film coming out this late summer based on the book, also by the same name, Killing Kyle Worth.
What else? I'm on city council.
I'm a community leader. I serve on a couple of nonprofit boards, two ministry boards, and then one drug treatment board. So yeah, I'm business leader, community leader, father, husband. Yeah, got some things going on. Author. So I've got some things going on.

**Clint Peake** (2:27)
It wasn't always that way though, right?

**Kyle Hunter** (2:29)
Wasn't always that way. Yeah.
Yeah, I had to, yeah, I kind of, I tell people I jokingly had to learn every, every lesson three times the hard way. So hopefully, hopefully I've ran through all those. So yeah.

**Clint Peake** (2:45)
What, what, and you grew up in Iowa, is that correct?

**Kyle Hunter** (2:47)
Yep. Yep. Born and raised in Iowa. Yep. Yeah. I'm originally from the Quad Cities, which is near the Illinois border.
It's a large area, has a large Chicago influence. So yeah, born and, was born and raised there. And then now I live in Cedar Rapids, which is more centrally located in Iowa.

**Clint Peake** (3:11)
Now, we actually got connected through a friend of yours. I think I was in a Facebook podcast group, and this guy who knows you pretty well just said, you've got to reach out to this guy. He's got an incredible story. And once we connected, as a former car salesman myself, I just really was drawn to your story for also all the redemptive qualities that you have. But how long did you sell BMWs for? Because in the bio, you said you were the number one BMW salesman. How long did you sell cars before you became a GM?

**Kyle Hunter** (3:42)
Yeah, so I was a BMW, so I was in top 1% of BMW salesmen. So I did that for probably 5 years, and then I kind of had a fall, and like ventured into some different industries, and some good industries, some bad industries.
And then once I got clean and sober, I re-entered into competitive sales, probably about, so I've been clean now for 5 years. So I was in another industry for a couple of years, and I've been back in the car industry for the last 2 years as a general manager.

**Clint Peake** (4:18)
And you stepped directly into that role, or did you start selling again?