Kathleen Black proves that hard work brings success on every stage of your business journey. From working her way to the top 1% of realtors recognized by the Toronto Real Estate Board, to now running her own real estate coaching and consulting agency, Kathleen has made a name for herself through never-ending effort and focus.
Over the years, Kathleen Black has become the most sought-after real estate coach and trainer in North America, overseeing the success of several firms in the United States and Canada. She has also founded the Kathleen Black Coaching and Consulting (KBCC) firm, which continues her work of helping out real estate firms that want to break out in the industry.
Throughout her long career, Kathleen Black had designed an internal process or program that she followed as she perfected her craft as an agent for more than 10 years. This program became the foundation of KBCC, which she formed in 2015. At KBCC, Kathleen sharpened her programs and developed her systems further, so that she may pass them on to her clients. She has also designed and crafted coaching systems and methods to give her clients everything they need to succeed professionally or personally.
Aside from running her own firm as CEO, Kathleen Black is also a successful business coach, a highly in-demand resource speaker, and educator. REP Magazine named her as one of the Top 100 Elite Women Driving the Future of Real Estate. In 2018, T3 Sixty also listed her as one of the Top 20 Emerging Leaders.
Check out more interviews with industry leaders here.
Jerome Knyszewski: What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Kathleen Black: Our company stands out because we build strong businesses, in an industry that is often still relying on old methods and models, which are increasingly less and less effective.
We stand out because we actually track, and have a strategy that works to expand, where teams are making much more money than traditional brokerages and offering superior value, where team members are able to sell much more and have more time.
I think in an industry where we have all male top thought leaders, we stand out in being a female led team, but also a team that is committed to efficiency, productivity, and profitability, without looking at it as if it’s a bad name.
We bring a systematic, process driven approach which allows us to be more agile and to lean into technology changes, instead of fearing them.
Jerome Knyszewski: Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Kathleen Black: Long days at the office along with constant work-related emails after hours can all contribute to workplace burnout.
But even without a physical office to go to, burnout can happen working from home, and it feels like it’s even more likely now due to the added stress of the coronavirus pandemic.
In order to not feel the burnout, I recommend following these four key steps.
- Get Strategic
If you start out strategically, with a strategic model, you will consider future needs for more time, relief, or somebody who can oversee parts of your business as you grow.
A strategic model will give you clarity and strategy. Once you get those two components, you need to be able to take your existing business to create a business structured to grow.
A strong strategic model will allow you to reinvest in the business in the right places to offer the top client experience to the public, while also reinvesting in your business platform.
- Create your ‘Perfect Week’
We’re all living in a different reality right now, we’re not leaving the house, we have different people pulling on our time, and some people may have their kids at home with them, along with other distractions.
So how do you find the element to work this other aspect of life into your day to day when everything was running smoothly before?
You have to sit down and create your perfect week, not because you want to, but because you absolutely have to. You need to grab control of your life again, to do yourself and your business the ultimate favor, succeeding.
If we make every effort to live each week and begin each day trying to have the perfect day, it just might happen.
Life isn’t perfect, but the perfect week gives us a game plan to follow and guide us through our days.
- Focus on your Non-Negotiables
When planning your days or weeks, make sure you take your non-negotiables into consideration. These are the things that no matter what is in your day’s plan, won’t change.
Now that we’re in a day and age where we’re having issues in regard to the many things that are being thrown at us on the daily, we will go into overwhelm.
Overwhelm can mean we’re snapping at our loved one’s, having skin reactions, feeling anxious, and more. Overwhelm makes us want to surrender, and take shelter, but unfortunately we cannot do that. We have to operate in this new normal.
By ensuring you’ve covered your non-negotiables, you’re ensuring that you can make sure your cup is filled and that you’re okay. When you’re okay, you will not be overwhelmed, you will be at 110% for your clients, loved ones and family.
- Practice Makes Perfect
A lot of Real Estate agents overlook practicing the key steps in their sales process, like scripting and presentations, which puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to competing with agents who are consistently practicing their materials.
It’s crucial to have a daily or weekly allotted time, where you can ensure the conversations you have with your clients are seamless and professional in every aspect.
Mastery is nuanced. To understand nuance, you must live among it, bathe in it, and breathe it. Mastery becomes the essence of us. We practice mastery without thinking.
This is when you successfully turn something that you consciously knew you didn’t know into something you know and, finally, into something you know unconsciously.
This is where you can present a presentation while focusing 100% on your client. The presentation no longer requires any mental bandwidth or conscious focus. Your body knows to have your finger click next on the laptop to move the slides without needing to look at the screen or visually assess which slide is next.
Jerome Knyszewski: None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Kathleen Black: I don’t think there has ever been one person. A lot of my opportunities actually came from overcoming challenges, so some of the people who gave me some of the opportunities I had are also people who presented massive challenges for me and my career.
At the end of the day, it’s relying on great mentorship, there’s not only one person I can name.
There were definitely brokers who gave me great advice and now we’ve built programs in place that we’ve created together, like Paul Baron from The #1 Century 21 Brokerage for the country, C21 Leading Edge in Canada.
I’m grateful for our team, I have an amazing group of people who support me and there’s no way I would be able to do what I do without them.
We have a collaborative leadership team who are very entrepreneurial, and who take ownership over what needs to happen. It’s very collaborative without a director style delegation, everyone owns their portion of the business. That is how we thrive.
Jerome Knyszewski: Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. Delegating effectively is a challenge for many leaders. Let’s put first things first. Can you help articulate to our readers a few reasons why delegating is such an important skill for a leader or a business owner to develop?
Kathleen Black: For most top producers turned Team Leaders, the people management is often the most difficult aspect of the job. When your team and business are growing, you need to learn to let go of your control and delegate to your team members, with trust.
Systems, training and leverage create a performance environment for everyone, while also building trust.
We build our leaders and we build our performance environments, which will always trump talent. The environment always wins, creating a performance environment that will encourage people to win and grow, while implementing the systems and processes your team needs to succeed in the big picture, and in the long term.
Let your people manage themselves once they are trained. Give them the room to have the dream that brought them into a sales role in the first place, which is to run their own business.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you help articulate a few of the reasons why delegating is such a challenge for so many people?
Kathleen Black: For most people, delegating is such a challenge due to losing control. It’s very difficult for anyone, especially business owners or entrepreneurs to give up the control to do their own tasks. This is why integrating systems and processes into your business is so crucial.
Delegating also takes a lot of time to mentor, Your role as a leader is to build the components that lead to results, ensure your systems empower others to deliver the standards of your business, and hold team members accountable to keep the system on track.
Manage the system and motivate the people.
Have systems and protocols that work so you’re not micromanaging, but powering up your people. Allow them to take responsibility and lean into what their gifts are. You need to support them with personal and business goals, so they can learn more about themselves in order to benefit your team.
Jerome Knyszewski: In your opinion, what pivots need to be made, either in perspective or in work habits, to help alleviate some of the challenges you mentioned?
Kathleen Black: Like I mentioned above, systems, training and leverage create a performance environment for everyone, while also building trust.
Creating and Implementing Systems
Have systems and protocols that work so you’re not micromanaging, but powering up your people. Allow them to take responsibility and lean into what their gifts are. You need to support them with personal and business goals, so they can learn more about themselves in order to benefit your team.
The more someone grows as a person, the bigger their capacity is for excellence in business. Sometimes we’re scared of powering up our people but the reality is that growing businesses are going to have opportunities as you move up for people to grow into.
Let your people manage themselves once they are trained. Give them the room to have the dream that brought them into a sales role in the first place, which is to run their own business.
Training
Something that goes hand-in-hand directly with systems, is training. By implementing the right systems, training team members on said systems will create a smooth flow, and allow you to loosen the reins on your team.
When training, shadowing is generally the path taken when showing someone the ropes, but the mistake here is that every person does it differently every single time. This inconsistency doesn’t work to effectively prepare an agent for success when that agent is on their own.
The team leaders that I coach work on the idea of mastery — everyone follows the same steps, so everyone knows what it takes to be successful. At that point, the agents approach the situations with their own personalities and interpretations, but they have been empowered with a set system to be successful.
You need to find the right combination of training and systems, to move beyond learning and memorization to become part of who you are for each sales member of the team.
Leveraging
A crucial element is leverage. Do you know what you’re great at, and do you know the right profiles and the right expertise that you need in the other areas of your business?
Are you always aware of the next steps for your business, and how you’re going to get there?
Who’s the next hire you’ll have and are you adjusting your systems and processes to include them in it?
If you want, or have a big team, there may come a time when people management moves into a “Neutral,” “Includes Others,” “Unconscious Incompetence,” or “Stop” task on your GENIUS Model. We use this model to guide a leader’s highest and best use within a company.
Jerome Knyszewski: Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Kathleen Black: Conscious living. I think people who are conscious about who they are, their values, and what they’re bringing to the world are typically better parents, better team members, better community supporters, better people.
I find the ability to ‘do good’ is just more naturally present for people with a conscious mindset. If I can help people raise their consciousness and see their abilities and power, they will ultimately serve the world through their greater purpose with ease. If KBCC can have any influence on people leading themselves versus looking at others, that’s a win!
Jerome Knyszewski: How can our readers further follow you online?
Kathleen Black: You can find me on:
Jerome Knyszewski: This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
