Episode #647 - Having Authentic Communication with Kary Oberbrunner, Founder & CEO of Igniting Souls

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on Ready. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

All right, so let's go. And your. Where did you learn? You wrote the book. And what gave you. You must have reached a period of where you were past that you had overcome it to where you were. Felt like you were enough on the other side to be able to write a book.

Oh, yeah. It was scary, though, because my parents didn't know about cutting, and so they didn't know up.

Even all up to. To the. They didn't know.

They didn't know, man. And so here I came out in, I think, 2009.

You're the youth pastor.

I'm the youth pastor. Nobody knew. Nobody knew. Only my wife. And so I feel. I feel like I get the knock on the door of my heart that says, you got to write this book, 2010, you know, you got to write this book. And I'm like, heck, no, I'm not writing that book. And here's what I felt, Larry, again, not to be crazy, mysterious or anything, but I felt. I felt like in my heart God was saying, you don't have to write that book, but if you don't write it, you'll miss out on a big blessing.

Yeah.

And so I'm like, well, that. That sucks. I'm like that, you know, now I have to do it.

Yeah.

So. So then I wrote it. And honestly, that's the book that put my brand, my business, me on the map.

Yeah.

And I'm not saying, oh, I became a household name, but what I am saying is I broke free from all those secrets and lies.

Yeah.

Now. Now nobody could say to me, we know the real truth about you. I had already told the world.

Yeah.

And that's when my writing took off, my business took off. I started believing in myself.

What number book was that?

That was book number four.

Number four.

I had to go through three books where I was being safe and hiding.

Yeah. Well, the thing is, though, now, when you open that up now, you've had 20 years in the publishing industry after 12 years of ministry, and so, you know, your foundational thing, because the thing in our pastor situation, you're talking with people, you're exchanging ideas, you're encouraging, you're seeing if they respond to it. You're planning ideas, basically, that hopefully will take. If they're the right stuff, it'll take root. And people will be able to progress forward in their life. So you're getting, you know, it's teacher learning, situation learns. And so you're learning on an accelerated pace in that environment, because I'm sure you're learning all the insights you're getting yourself.

Yeah.

Passing it on. And so now you get out of the. You're writing books, but you. You. It wasn't good enough to. You wanted to be able to do it with full focus.

I wanted to do it full time. And. And so now I could finally. Now I could leave the pastorate.

Yeah.

I mean, honestly, that. That's what I wanted to do all along, believe it or not. It's not that I hated being a pastor, but I knew it was limiting.

Yeah.

You know, and so finally, by telling the truth, that was the key that opened the door. And I'm not saying it was, ooh, overnight. I didn't leave the pastorate for two years after that, but the process started. I mean, I literally went on tv.

Yeah.

Shared my story. I went on podcast.

That had to be something.

You know, I'll tell you what. And this is for all the parents listening here. Here's. Because this is really important. Before I set this out into the world, I wrote it. And then before it was published, I went.

You're holding that. You're holding the book. Your secret name.

Yeah, your secret name. I went to my parents and I said, hey, mom and dad, listen, I respect you guys. I know you have the best for me, but I'm going to share my story, and you don't know my story. And before I send this in the world, I want you to read it, and I respect you. I'm not going to change it. But I just want you to know first, before anybody else, I'll tell you what, Larry, it was not a good thing. And I'll tell you, I tell people that, but I got to tell them the full story. The short story is, my dad felt guilty. What did I do wrong? How did we miss this? What's our. Why did we miss.

My whole ministry's been a lie.

That type of thing. So they looked at, like, what their problem was.

Yeah.

And I. And I said, look, guys, you didn't. This wasn't you. This was me. This was. I should have told you. But here's the cool final conclusion of that story. A few years later, they're at my book signing event, and I'm sharing my story to young people. And afterwards, young person after young person came up, you know, to meet the speaker, and they Said, thank you for sharing. Oh, my gosh. I struggle with this. Your story gave me courage. Your story helped me. And then my parents are like, ah, got it.

Light bulb.

Yeah. And now, Larry, get this. Now they actually run the bookstore tables at my events. They. They love the people, they come to the events. So that's what I'm talking about. Like, you got to know the end of the story.

And it takes a while to, you know, while you're going through the hours that turn into days, that turn into weeks, that turn into years, and that's like year one, you know, some of these things happen. Three years later.

It's true.

These things happen. You know, bad and good can seem excruciating to go through. I remember, I remember when we had rocket ship growth in financial services business in North Carolina. For a period of time, we went from nothing to where we recruited 25,000 people in three years.

Oh, my gosh.

But here's. It sounds fantastic after it was all over, but I stayed madder than fire most of the time, every day. Because what. When things. You get a sale, a recruit, a success, you have the potential for 8 to 10 more. Because you know what I'm saying, there's so many people drop the ball. So many people who are, you know, had great momentum and they. When you have width, you have lots of people armies going in spite of it all, you know, the overall number looks fantastic. You know, but what I was noticing is all these people, I knew their individual stories, and I'd stay. I would stay frustrated with him. It just seemed like it was even. What dawned on me was even in rocket ship, positive growth. It seemed excruciatingly slow.

Yeah. Oh, that's true. Yeah. It's easy to tell the story and look back and be like, yeah, like, just like you're saying this happened and that happened, but you're right. There's those dark night of the souls where you're like, am I crazy? What am I thinking? Did I make the right choice? You don't know. In the moment.

Yeah. That's where that hardening, that toughening comes up. That gives you the authenticity when you. You say the words, you get up in front of people, you give them answers, things like that. Because people can't spot kids as good as anybody can spot phonies.

Yes.

Hear the phoniness. You know, they can hear it if it's 10, you know, yes, four or five sentences are authentic, but that one is wrong. You know, they hear it just like, like, like it says in Corinthians the clanging bell.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're not doing it with love. You're not doing it with.

Yes.

Genuineness and like, bang, bang, bang. That's true.

It's something like we say, something sounds off.

Right. And so. So you got up, but now, you know, you opened up. You had no idea where this was going to. Origami. I like the idea of origami.

Oh, I like that.

Like the unfolding where you now have impacted 250,000 authors, influencers and all with your struggles and everything that created lessons and allow you to put things in place that could help other people. There's really no shortcut to going through that process, is there?

You know, there's a good story. People have probably heard about it, but it's a story about a man who finds a butterfly. And he is walking in the woods, he sees a caterpillar, and that caterpillar is breaking out of the cocoon, and he sees it, and it's kind of like half butterfly, half caterpillar. And, you know, he's like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to help this thing out. I feel so bad. It's struggling. So he goes home and he cuts the cocoon and allows the pseudo butterfly to get out.

Right.

And he's like, oh, my gosh, this is great. And what happens? The butterfly never flies.

Yeah.

Because it didn't use its strength of the wings to push the fluid to push through the cocoon fly. And that's the truth. That's us. We are this cocoon. We're in this caterpillar phase. We're trying to break free. And we think, oh, my gosh, God, just get me out of the pain. Just give me out.

Yeah.

What. What's really happening? And people use, you know, the universe and all this language, and I, you know, I just say, God's got a plan. And God is actually using the pain to transform you. And you. Here's what would have happened, Larry, you know, because I was. I did struggle with suicidal thoughts. I was always scared to do. To commit suicide because I felt like, you know what? I'll go to heaven. But God will. God will say, you're here early.

Yeah.

Then he'll say, look at all I had planned for you.

Right.

That's honest. That's the only reason I didn't commit suicide, because I thought, I know there's something bigger.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll have to say that I had the thought. In fact, I had years where I had. During the early years where I would have a recurring dream of driving to work. And it was like a 12 story building. And I'd see a figure hanging by a noose out the window.

Are you serious?

Yeah, out the window from roughly where our offices were hanging out. Just, you know, noose. And I'd say, well, what does that get my tent and drive close. And it happened every time. I said, oh, that's me.

Oh my gosh.

Wow. It is. It's funny that every time I dream that dream, when it first happened, it happened the same way. I had no idea who it was until, you know, it got close. I could see it's just repeated over and over. But I might have had that dream. I might have had that thought. There's no chance to be, ever commit suicide because I didn't have the guts.

Exactly.

It's like that's not an option that's on the table. You know what I'm saying? I'm going to have to go through this.

And so maybe somebody's listening to the show right now because listen, our, our, our suicide rates are up, our world, you know, but maybe they can hear your words. My words, and say, yeah, you know, there is another bigger plan for my life.

Yeah. The guy that started our company used to say it's our manager meetings, you know, your locker room talks. He said, he said your breakthrough will.

Come.

After the second time you seriously consider suicide. But then you don't do it. Usually it's after the second time you really think about it. But you got to live through these things. Or some of us have to live through that because we question yourself. And so how did, now that you wanted to write books, you're out on your own. How do you find, how did you find your way up the ladder to where you can start a publishing company and you can start all of these things?

Yeah, in the beginning you're self focused. And I was, I was thinking it's about my books, my legacy, my readers. Me, me, me, me, me. That's how you start a lot of times in business, unfortunately. And then you realize, you know what, you're not going to make much of an impact that way. And I wrote another book called show up Filled up where it basically says, stop going in every relationship empty. Stop needing other people. You show up filled up, you bring the value. And that's what shifted, Larry. I had a fail a lot. I was the kid who went to the networking event and then said, here's my business card, let me know if I can help you. And that wasn't Leading with value. Just today I was on a call with a huge influencer. And why? Because I saw yesterday that she had a pre release book come out and it's not optimized the right way on Amazon. She actually is losing sales. And so I sent a very cool short video on Loom L O O M. I highly recommend it. It's a great little tool. And I said, hey, your book, it looks amazing. Here's what you did so well. Your title, your subtitle, your description, blah, blah, blah. I said, you know what? I know you want to reach a lot of people. Here's what you're missing. Boom, boom, boom. I said, if you want me to help, hop on a call, love to help you. Now, I know this person. Not I never met her met her, but this person is a giver. This person is known in the industry as somebody who's like, always giving, always giving. And guess what? I know those type of people. So I got on the call with her and I said, listen, here's how I want to help you. And I said, and there's no charge. And her jaw dropped and she's like, what do you mean? I said, listen, you don't know this, but you helped me this way and this way and this way. I know we're just meeting, but over the years you've helped me and I want to give back. And right away she's like, oh, you don't even know how I'm going to make this up to you. I'm going to so make this up to you, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I got you. I got you. That's what I'm talking about, Larry. The old Carrie would have been like, you know, hey, I'll help you, but you know, here's the proposal and this. And again, I can't do free for everybody, right? But I know that for this person, I have gained value over the years. So that's an example. Now what will that do in six months? Larry, I'm not even making this up. That will turn into over a million dollars in business. She will be so blown away that our team helped her. She will tell that person and that person and that person and that person. You, you need to work with Carrie. Yeah, I just know it. I mean, that's how we don't run. I used to run $50,000 of ads in Facebook every month on repeat. And I'm not even a huge business. I stopped doing that a few years ago because the referrals are just coming in. Because if you do good work. You show up filled up and you over deliver and you do what you say and you say what you do. You'll get around. Your words will get around.

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