KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Elevating Your Personal Brand Through AI Systems and Professional Speaking Mastery

Episode Date: May 30, 2026

Summary:Guest Kendall Barnett joins host Jon Kitchens to outline strategies for modern real estate professionals looking to transition their business and step onto public stages. Barnett introduces "Clamr," a free, brand-agnostic global real estate hub that avoids traditional sales fatigue by teaching agents how to upscale through modern multi-media systems. Listeners will learn a three-part credibility model to securely audit their marketplace performance, discover how to use automated custom AI bots for technical speaking feedback, and close corporate gaps by thinking like a CEO.

Seven-figure success starts when you start thinking like a CEO. Welcome to the John Kitchens Coach podcast experience. This is your host, John Kitchens. Get ready to think bigger and transform your business into a path to lasting freedom. What is happening, everybody, man? Thank you guys. Tune in to another episode of the Agent to CEO podcast, and we have a special treat today.

Super excited anytime I get an opportunity to jump in and jam with the one and only, Ms. Kendall Bonnet. Kendall, how are you? I am so good. Blessed and highly favorite, I like to say. There you go. There you go. I love that.

Yeah. How are you doing? I'm doing fantastic. Happy New Year. And, you know, I know you're south enough to where you got a little bit of the cold. You didn't get everything that we got annihilated with. It was too cold. It was, I'm in Tampa, Florida, and it was freezing.

It was too cold. We're not used to that down. here. Okay. It was a problem. Yeah, you don't put cold in Tampa. Usually don't go, don't go together. So wild. Well, Kendall, you've been up to a lot. You never let things stand still. And I'm really excited to jump in conversation around a couple of things. And really what, like, hey, let's get on this. Let's talk about this because of the second thing we're going to talk about and didn't even know about this, the first thing, right? We chatting about it a little before. And, was book recommendation that Ms. Tina call, got a phone call last week.

And she's like, I need you to read something. And I was like, well, I've read it, but I will immediately start rereading it again. And the book is Playbigger. And I feel like everything that I started listening to at the end of last week, kind of like, oh, yeah, I remember kind of going through this when the book came out in 2016, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2017 timeframe. And everything that you're up to, and I'm like, okay, she is, she is creating some new category kings.

And I'm really excited to jump in with you today. Thank you. Thank you. It's an honor. And I'm excited. I have not heard that book. So I have already added it to my cue. It will be the next thing I listen to.

So thank you, Tina. And thank you, John. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. It aligns right into what you're already doing. and let's jump into the first new initiative and that you're you're really bringing into the real estate industry.

And it's like I was sharing with you as you were kind of explaining what it is. And really was kind of as you were talking, my mind was running from one of our longtime mentors. We spent probably, I mean, honestly, we wouldn't be here today without him. And that was Mr. J. Abraham. him and he changed our lives and the way we think in so many different ways. But the concept of really what the category kings are and why you explore outside of your industry.

So I'll let you kind of unpack what the climber community is and really kind of where it started and why there's an absolute need to have this type of community and this type of conversation in our industry. Yeah, no, thank you, John. And I mean, this is one of those things I, you know, there's not a lot of places to be, I'll refer to it as like philanthropic in real estate, right? Like there's not a lot of ways to do that. And I, a lot of people are always like, Kendall, you should be a coach. And I'll tell you, like, it started when I was a kid.

I used to say in high school to my mom was like, I want to be a teacher. My mom said, think again. They don't make any money. And so she told me to go to law school, like go to school, you know, JD, MDP, Hed, one. So for those of you that know me, you know, I went JD and I went to law school, right? And that's how my journey and my career began. But I've always had this passion and heart for educating others. I love to go learn new things and then share them with people, right? And it's like, hey, look what I go, I went and figure it out. And let me teach you how to, how to duplicate, right? I'm into that kind of

process. But basically, I've been missing an outlet for that. And Veronica and I are, you know, really dear industry friends, right? Like we go back over a decade of friendship, both personal and professional. And we had been on vacation and we were ideating and with another group of friends. And so she invites me to her home in Puerto Rico right after the vacation said,

hey, there's a mastermind. I'm going home to. I have some friends in town that are at that mastermind. Kendall, I just feel like you should come and come be with us and come mastermind. with us and I said, something in me said, you know what? Why not? Right? There was I just, and it ties me back to my first agent to CEO talk. I spoke on, because I wrote this for you guys, the cost of the excuses you're telling yourself, right? Like, what are all the issues you miss?

Because you come up with an excuse not to do something, right? Like, whether it's fear, doubt, and uncertainty, whatever the case may be, maybe for some people's finances, like, whatever it is that you're using as an excuse not to do something, it is costing you. I guarantee it. And so I remember my husband saying, I was saying to Bill, it's like, hey, we go. And he's like, why are we going? Like, we just got vacation. I need to get back home to go to work. And I was like, no, I felt something in my soul. So I ended up booking it. It was the craziest workaround. I go home, fly home Saturday from Costa Rica, Sunday morning, 6 a.m. on like, literally we're home five hours. Pack up, get on a plane to Puerto Rico to go.

mastermind with Veronica and these new people I had not met before. And lo and behold, she introduced me to these two gentlemen, Jake and Tony, Tony Cruz and Jake Randolph. And I promise you that weekend was magic. I call it actually a divine appointment. We were intended to be that weekend. And we're mastermining around, you know, community and real estate and like our fear, not our fears, but our concerns and our challenges with the way things are done today and how they've always been done. I think I mentioned to you before, there's this concept of in real estate, we've always done the same thing, the same, right? Like, it's the same five ways to generate leads, the same five ways to do our business. And I've been really frustrated with that for so long.

And I felt like we've got to start looking outside of our industry for how to do things better because the consumer's changing. And we can't continue to do things the same way that we did 40 years ago. Now, yes, does door knocking work? Probably. Could. Sure. Maybe.

But is that the most effective, most efficient best way to do business going forward? You know, and so I've constantly been challenging myself with this. So anyway, we were a mastermind. We were talking and we realized that we had all these synergies. And so we decided that weekend that we were going to do something about it. And that was the beginning of the beginning of what we now refer to as the climber community. I love that. And so why, like, why now, right?

Like, why does the industry need a community? There's so many other these groups, these communities, things that people can gravitate or fall into. But why does this industry need this community right now? Yeah. So let me tell you a little bit about it. So, because I think that helps answer the question. Number one, climber is a free community for real estate professionals. It's brand agnostic. So we literally have people, let me just tell you this about it. We have brand new agents. We have agents that have been in the business 30 plus years in this community. We have solo agents, top producers, team leaders. We have franchise owners and broker owners in this community. We have every brand under sun from independence to like your rematch, your LP, your EXP, your Real, your Coldwell Bank. your Central 21st, like Keller Williams, like literally I have approved all of these members into this group. We have residential agents. We have commercial agents in this community. We have people all over the 50 states of the U.S.,

but we also have members in Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Europe, Southeast Asia, like Latin America, like literally all over the world, all over the globe. And so, and it's this community of agents who are all interested. in the same thing, in my opinion, because this is what we told them we wanted to do with them, which was grow and grow in a way that is consistent with what is happening in the world today. Like, for example, how consumers purchase, how they buy, how they experience marketing is completely different today than how it was pre-pandemic. Let's just go further back than that, right? Just pre-pandemic people are experiencing marketing and pre-pandemic people.

their purchases and how they hire service-oriented service providers and things like that, that's all changed already, right, just in the last five years. Not to mention the movement of AI and artificial intelligence from 2020 to today is like 10x, right? And so we're thinking about in this community, like, how do we bring that new language, that new modeling, that new skill set into today's environment, into today's real estate world? because this is how, you know, everyone talks about how AI won't replace us, although there's a challenge there.

I mean, if you're not paying attention to what Elon Musk is doing, he's like literally no longer building cars because he believes cars won't be needed, you know, especially in the light of Waymo, who's been in a Waymo. I experienced that for the first time in the last year. Like, if you're not paying attention to what's happening, you are going to truly get skilled out of a job. And so upskill upskilling is about leveraging these new marketing methodology, these new skill sets that take into account this new level of technology that we now have

access to and making yourself more efficient, honestly smarter, more strategic, more intentional, and more proactive in your business. And so, like, we are, what's beautiful about this is that all four of us are obsessed with how do we implement these things in our own business and how do we teach others how we're doing it and how we've done it, right? It was so funny last night we were announcing, we were on a call, a founder call yesterday. And just a little insight because we meet every week to kind of talk about the week's activities. And someone was like on the team was like, hey, we need to film a video the four of us, like announcing 72 community. And Veronica's like, wait a minute, why aren't we using AI to do that?

Why don't we film an AI video and then make a class about how to do that? And it was so great because we were already top of mind for these things. So last night we were literally texting at 10, 11. o'clock at night, sharing the same script, creating the same different AI video between all of our different avatars and joking about how we're going to teach others how to school. And all of it for free. You can't get this kind of education and experience like this. Most people are charging, whether it's $47, $10,000 coaching to teach me these things. And we're offering it to this community for free. So when you realize like the kind of care,

you're getting and the kind of training and exposure that you're getting in this community. Not to mention, we offered a free go high level account in there that's already built out. Like, we're giving so much value in this community that I think it's been just an easy yes for people to come in and invite their friends. Sure. What is the, what is the kind of the tradeoff, right? So obviously, we're not charging anything to be a part of the community. come in. I mean, like, looking, putting the business hat on, thinking down the road, I mean,

what is kind of the goal, the intent of climber? I mean, where do you guys see this going into the futures or monetization strategy later on? Like, what is kind of, what's the roadmap look like with climber? Yeah, great question. And we've been asked this question before. So we're very transparent about it. The community is free to its members, right? And so we do offer a ton of value there for, free currently right now. And that will continue. There will always be free value from that community. How we plan to monetize, because yes, it is ultimately a business model for us, is through vendor relationships and partnerships. As you know, I'm the former VP of strategic partnerships for ExP. And even before then, I mean, that was one of the reason why I took the job because I was

already friends with all these guys and I already knew a lot of these vendors from my experiences past. But, you know, we want to, especially Veronica and I, we have partnered with a lot of great partners in our businesses, right? We've worked with a lot of great strategic movers and shakers. And so when you have these relationships, we are working with some of the best tools in the industry and we're bringing them to our agents. And not just that, we're teaching them how to use it. So for example, on our last, just is our most recent event. we did a webinar and it was sponsored by Bigview. Big View is a tool I have been using and paying for personally since I want to say

2018 at the latest, right? It might even been earlier. But that tool is a video tool that, you know, can really change the game and improve someone's business. And so they sponsored and we'll do a training with them this week. Last week they offered our agents in the Climbled Community a free social media audit. And then they're coming in and doing a free training on how to scale your build AI powered video in under 10 minutes. All of that is being offered to our agents for free.

So whether they have big view or not, they can leverage this experience and learn these strategies and techniques. And if they pick up the tool along the way, we want them to do that if it brings them value in their business. And they wouldn't have known about this tool or been able to have access to like how this works, but for a strategically and intentionally bringing them valuable tools to the community. Plus, we do intend to maybe do events and things like that. But the goal here is to build a ton of value and raise the bar in our industry. For me, like, I'm not selling coaching or anything. I'm just like, I have a bunch of trainings in there.

And it's just free knowledge I'm giving because I want to see the industry improve and be great. And I want to see people actually have profitable businesses in real estate. Yeah, no, I love that. So I guess maybe take me back now since we kind of understand what, what the climber the clamor community why now like why does the industry need different perspectives and outside industry insights what's working why does why does our industry need this now i would say in my opinion there's so much noise there's so much noise in our industry and you know coming off the the wave of the mega lawsuits right um that was super noisy that dominated the airwaves

for some time. Then the most recent wave domination was around consolidation and mergers and acquisitions, the MLS, Zillow. All of those things are dominating airwaves, but they don't actually move an agent, the business needle of an agent, right? They don't move the needle. And so right now, agents are struggling with, where do I go for support? On top of that, we are seeing a lot of brokerages, not all, this is not a critique to all, but I just find like it's just common amongst a lot of brokerages, especially our smaller independence. They can't compete with the very extremely fast pace of movement of what's happening in terms of technology, in terms of SaaS, in terms of tools. And so agents are choosing because brokerages are saying, hey, in order to be more competitive,

I have to be cheaper, but if I'm cheaper, I provide less services. Agents are being forced today, now more than ever to seek outside their broker for support. They're being forced to access other tools. And because there's so much happening, especially with the pace of AI and all the different products out there, if there's not one tool, there's another, who is out there vetting these tools so that I don't waste my own time and money? And so, you know,

Veronica and I, we are like the beta test queens. Like we get asked to beta test products all the time. We get asked to, to, hey, take a look at, learn more about. And so, and we don't say yes to every product. Neither one of us do. We are very selective and we put our money where our mouth is. We make our own investments in these tools. And we, we've been learning like, hey, this works. This doesn't. This is why this work. This is the mistakes that were made. And so having a space where you can be and learn

and be like almost like a fly on the wall of two business operators to learn from, I think is very valuable to people because they're like, hey, someone finally telling me the truth about what's what. And you're not just trying to sell me a product, right? So because that's not our intention. It's not to sell products is to help elevate your business. And when you come from that perspective, your approach is different. And the impact is different.

And the consequences are different too. Yeah, no, I love it. Just kind of a lot of thought around, like you said, things are so noisy and most transparent time in history, but also the least trusting time in history as well, right? Isn't that crazy? Yeah, we're in a trust economy right now, meaning with AI, all of that, people don't know what to believe, what to trust. I mean, I saw an image the other day that I was like, there's no. no way or a quote the other day that I was like there's no way that that was said or that was true. But now with access to AI, people are able to fake things, you know, recreate things and

true or false and aren't always honest about it. So trust is a huge factor. Yeah. And I think people are, I don't know if we're to the point of starving, but I believe looking for the resources that we can trust, right? Like that. we can we can come into a community, a location to where we can be like, I trust everything that's in here, right? You know, I trust and verify, but like sometimes it's like, it's not even like getting into a certain space or a certain ecosystem or like a certain channel and you're like, I'm not even going to give. I can't even give the benefit of the doubt of trust first. It's like, I need to verify. And then it gets to a point. It's like, this is too, this is too noisy.

is too hard. I'm just like, I'm out, right? And I think that's, we're just seeing a lot of people that I think are just kind of stepping away. But if they have a place where they can lean in, and what I really love, and you and I were talking about this before coming live, and I had mentioned, you know, mentor bias of ours taught, you know, this lesson to us. And he's like, listen, you can copy what everybody's doing in your industry. That's perfectly fine. Just understand copying the best of the best in your industry is only going to give you incremental gains. Where you have the exponential gains of growth is understanding and knowing what's working outside of your industry and then applying that to your industry.

And I mean, that was hard. I mean, you had to travel. You had to go to other industry events. You had to go to other things. But now creating a community that people can go to that within our industry, people that we trust, a community that we trust, is being able to, you know, tap into resources that are working in hundreds and hundreds of other industries out there of what's working. How can we apply it to what we're trying to accomplish in our own industry?

Yeah, so many points I want to make here and I'll try to be brief with them because I, of course, want this to be a conversation. But, you know, one of the things you said that I think is super important to highlight and like repeat for the people in the back is because we're salespeople, our sales skepticism is like really high. and we're taught all these tricks around, you know, oh, say this, so then they do this. And it feels like a lot of manipulation, you know, like a lot of the strategy that gets taught.

And so, you know, we're always afraid of the bait and switch. And I think like when our sales skepticism is so high, that's what we're thinking. And that's why sometimes people look at climber and they're like, wait, what? And we have decided, it's like, listen, we're just going to be honest up front what the goals are and what the plan is. Like, we want to grow this to a really large community. we want to help agents elevate in their business and grow. Like I just literally have a heart for giving and teaching. And anyone that spent time with me knows that I do that and I do it freely and I don't gatekeep.

And so, you know, this is very on brand for me, to be honest, to do something like this. And I've always struggled with monetizing. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, climbers become like this great solution because I don't have to worry about monetizing agents who are my true. audience, I get to monetize through these partnerships and these vendor relationships and who can afford it. To be perfectly honest, right? And so that by being transparent, I think that elevates trust. And I think that when people start to lead with transparency on the front end, that creates that trust factor. And then as far as your second point about going outside the industry, I 100% agree with that. In fact, the beginning of this year, part of my new found relationship and partnership

with Jake and Tony led me to an event that they were speaking at, which was the AI Bot Summit. And this is the longest standing AI conference in the country. They've been doing this year over year for several years now. And I have to tell you, I went in that room not knowing what to expect. But I was tuned in. I was locked in. I had no more meetings. I was doing. I was doing, everything I could to sit in that room for three days. Do you know they started at like 8, 8.8.30 and they went till six at night. One night they went until nine because they vibe coded. Like they did a whole vibe coding session. And I mean, it was crazy to lock in that all these people had. And these people were small business owners, large business owners. These were people who

were selling AI, people who wanted to implement AI, people who were just getting exposed to AI. And that conference changed the game for me and my husband. And, And it was so powerful to step outside of real estate to go learn some new things that now I have the honor and the privilege to take that and bring it back to my industry, bring it back home and share with my world. Like, hey, this is what we should be thinking about and how we could be leveraging this differently so that we can show up, you know, talk about having a unique value proposition and or out, you know, creating a space outside of our competition, right? Like, we're always looking for the competitive advantage. Well, I'm telling you, like that exists outside the industry, just like your friend said and just like you've said, but you've got to put in the work to and have the time. You'll filter it and bring it back through.

Yeah, 100%. Hey, quick break before we move on. If you've ever wished you could clone yourself to handle all the behind-the-scenes stuff in your business, I've got the next best thing. Coachkitchens. AI is your 24-7 AI powered real estate business assistant. It's built for agents who want to stop guessing and start executing faster. Check it out at coachcitchens.a.i and see how it can plug right into your business today.

All right, back to the episode. So, Kendall, have you stepped away no other obligations within EXP? Are you kind of free of any of the EXP obligations at this time? Yeah, so I resigned from EXP corporate last year. It was a loving resignation. It was a loving departure. The relationship is as fabulous as today as it was. Yeah. In fact, I was just on a Slack message because I don't know if you know this, but I won 2026 MN Power Player. And so for my work, I was 25 with EXP. And so just getting all the messages from- Congratulations. That's amazing.

Thank you. Like getting the, like I was just getting congratulating. from internally and I was like, I miss you guys. We miss you too. And, you know, I've been invited to come back multiple times. I'm sure you have. I'm sure you have. And you will continue to be invited to come back. And, you know, I would always tell people, I'd be like, I don't know, like, what's

EXP up to? What's the direction they're going? I don't know. Call Kendall. She'll tell you. She knows exactly where they're going because she's driving where they're going. So, you know, having you out of that seat is. great for the climber community.

EXP is going to have have some work to try to fill your shoes for sure. So I was really, you know, intrigued to jump on and have, you know, this conversation with you, when you sent me a text about another project you're up to. And I want to kind of shift gears out of climber over to the Industry Speaks Academy because I, you know, just in like in conversations with Michael, Reese and conversations with Kinder, just as we're talking about, you know, the industry and the direction and, you know, the in-depth of marketing exposure that we've, you know, all collectively have done over the years. And more so conversations with Reese around

taking advantage of the increase of headcount, building an organization. organization opportunity that's available to us at EXP. It's also available to almost every company now, right, has had to pivot to install some type of revenue sharing opportunity to just, you know, stay in the game, if you will, to match what EXP has, you know, really flipped the whole industry upside down by, you know, implementing the revenue share model. And one of the things that, that we've,

found and especially for me on the coaching side since we came over to expe in 2017 is that man it's hard to juggle trying to increase headcount and if you're still like have to drive production right like it's so hard to have one foot in the you know the production bucket in one foot in i need to grow i want to grow my organization i want to grow like it's so it's it's it's almost impot possible. To do both. You nailed it. It's two different businesses.

So it's essentially you're like CEO of two businesses. And most people can't even be CEO of one business, let alone two. And that's your spot on. That's exactly how you have to have to tackle it. And just conversating with Mikey about it, he's like, listen, man, you got to do one to many and you got to space it out. essentially what he's saying is like you either got to do a webinar or you got to do events and there's no other way around it so the ability to get at the front of the room get on stage being

able to have a really a process to be able to connect with the audience to be able to add value to be able to move them to take action on whatever it is you want them to take action it is a skill set and an art form that just takes time to develop. And most people have, I mean, they would rather get pushed out of a three-story building than get up and have a conversation in front of a crowd, right? Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about the direction of the Industry Speaks Academy, why you wanted to go that path, why you wanted to do it.

And listen, if anybody's qualified to teach on this and do it, this, you are, you are the person. I mean, you are fantastic from stage and being able to command an audience. So I would just love, you know, what inspired you to build this and go this route? Yeah, no, thank you for that, John. I have to say, like, it started because, and I'll be honest, I have been blessed. And I say this, like, with as much humility as possible, I have been blessed to be on hundreds of stages in my career at this point and thousands of hours of stage time. And that was not something I originally planned or thought I would do, but it certainly has become something that I enjoy doing that I find now I find great comfort in.

It used to, the nerves used to be really, really bad, much better today. Like I really almost have zero nerves about it today compared to in the past. And, you know, I was being approached by people often that, you know, recognizing. what I was doing because I'm not the most braggadocious about my stage time that I've done, but the people that have noticed would say, like, how did you do that? Like, I want to do that. And I didn't have a next step for them that I knew I could point them to that would give them the opportunity to duplicate what I have been able to experience in my career. And so I felt like there was this like blue ocean opportunity of being able to elevate new voice.

And so part of what happened was I recognized them going to a lot of the events. I would see a lot of the same faces. I would hear a lot of the same feedback loops or message loops on stage. Like I was at NAR in Houston. I spoke there. And I remember listening to some speakers and thinking, this is old. That was like literally my thought. Like this is not interesting to me.

And I thought, man, there's so many more interesting voices out there who are doing really new, unique, and powerful things that are working. And they're experiencing success maybe on social media, which is great. But the industry needs to be impacted. The industry needs to learn. And that there's this other model. There's these other ways of approaching or thinking about these things. And so I realized, like, how do, how can I help, right? It was the first thing.

So when I decided to do this, when I got the idea, which I really do feel like it was a God planted idea because I've been praying about what my next move was, what my next chapter was. I thought I knew, but I wasn't sure. And then God planted the seed. And the first thing I did was I called all of my event organized, all my industry friends. I literally texted them. That's the level of relationship I have with these people.

And I said, hey, can you talk to me in the next day or two? I just have a quick question for you. And within 24 to 48 hours, I talked to all the big ones. And I said, if I build this, will you come? Kind of thing. Like, if I build this, could you see value in it? Would you source speakers from the academy? This is my idea.

And it was a 100% yes. It was, we need this. And these are event organizers. These are all the planners of all these different. They're always looking for talent. They're always looking for great speakers. They're looking for fresh voices, but they don't have, especially when I think about one of my favorite partners in men, they are doing at least four events a year. And when they do four events, they're doing like multiple pieces of content all day.

In fact, sometimes they're running two tracks at the same time, right? Like they're running multiple tracks very fast on offstage. So they have the capacity for hundreds of speakers for any one event. So imagine the people, the team that has to go and source these speakers. source this content, you know, source these ideas. Like, it's just a lot of work. And so I was like, how can I support you? And this is one of the ways that they also agreed I could support them.

So I built the academy to be what I call is a preparation and readiness program for speakers. So this isn't necessarily just for brand new speakers. This is for speakers who've already been on stages and realize like, hey, I like this, and I want to do more of this. And I really want to fine-tune this craft. tune this craft. I want to take it from like a talent to a skill, right, or something that's more intentional. So that way I can duplicate this on more stages. And so that's what I've been working on. And I'll stop talking so you can ask me another question. No, I love it. You can keep going.

And yeah, I think not only the connections is part of it, right? I mean, it's a really big part to be able to get on those stages. But when you do have the opportunity, what is, you know, the format that's going to allow you to get connected, but also to get you to come back to the stages? That's the thing. You know, how do you, how do you make an impact not only on the audience, but it's also, how do you make things easier for the event coordinators? How do you add value to them, right? So there's so many different nuances that a lot of people don't understand because they're just so fixated on, oh my gosh, I got to speak in front of people. That's all they're consumed with.

They don't understand all of those other things. And being able to have somebody like you in their corner that can, you know, open the door for them, but then give them the format that's going to be able to, you know, make an impact to the audience, but also get the event coordinators wanting you to come back. I think it's invaluable. Yeah, no, thank you for that. And this is what I tell people, because you're right. Either people are either, oh my gosh, I'm going to be on stage or I have a story to tell.

I just want to tell my story. And I'm like, okay, let me help you with this, right? Let me give you a reframe. Let me give you like a step back to think about this. This is how I describe what the academy is built to do. So I feel like there's what I refer to as the credibility gap is the biggest challenge that aspiring and repeat speakers have. and how the credibility gap works is most people are asking themselves, like, how do I go from

experience to contribution, right? And experience is, you know, most people think like, oh, I'm an expert at this. I'm experienced. You should put me on stage. And that's not how it actually works. But so how I broke it down is into three parts. The first part is you need to have what I refer to as street credibility. If you do not have street credibility, you will not end up on a stage. Period. And the story, don't even try. You have to build the street cred first. That is your expertise. That is your experience. That is your learned knowledge, right? That's what I'm bringing to the tables. I have street credit on stages and in those rooms, right? I've done it many, many, many times as an example. The second, and so most people don't have a problem with building that, right? Most people don't even come to me until they know they have that. But where we find the biggest challenges in the second two credibility, the second credibility that a lot of people miss. and don't have and don't realize they need. And that is your performance credibility. This is you've been on small stages.

You've been building on your stage time, right? Like you've done the podcast. You've done the webinars. You've done the local association events. You've done the brokerage level of events. You've been in the rooms with 50 people. Now you've been in the rooms with 250 people. Now you've been in a room with 1,000 people.

And now you're ready for a stage that has 5,000 people. Like you have put in the reps. And not only that, the first time you did the talk or had the mess said the message wasn't the first time you're on stage. A lot of people make that mistake. And so that's where nerves come in. That's where people start to over script themselves. Like there's a lot of mistakes that get made there as opposed to building it in a safe environment where you can practice and then get real feedback. A lot of people will go on stage and they'll come off stage and I'll ask a friend or anyone, how did I do?

And what does everyone say, you did great? Well, that's not helpful, right? Whether you did or not, that's not helpful. Not at all. Right? This isn't going to get you, you know, it's not going to help you grow. And so performance credibility is one of those credibility a lot of people are missing that they don't know. One or two stages is not enough. And then the third, and not only that, there are a lot of times people get stuck in a loop. Like I'll be, for example, I can use myself as an example, in the beginning of myself, stage career, a lot of the stages I was on were all remax because that was the brand I was with. I did a ton of stage work. I mean, I was in crowds. I was at R4 on their main stage being interviewed

by Wayne Brady. That was one of my first big, big, big stage opportunities, over 5,000 people in that audience, right? That was like 2018, I think. And so like, but that was just in front of that audience, right? Now I've expanded into audiences that are more brand agnostic. I've been speaking at associations in Canada, like outside the U.S., there's a, but you have to build on that performance credibility in order to have it. And then the third credibility that a lot of people miss and don't know they need, I refer to it as referral credibility. And referral credibility is made up in two parts.

Number one, someone has to vouch for you. That's just a fact. Like, event organizers are looking for someone to say, yep, I've heard them speak. They did great. you know, they don't have time to go and do R&D in every single speaker. Like, they will do it. But typically it's because they've either seen them before or someone referred them, right?

Or they've heard of them in some fashion. So you want to be referred. But the second part to that is having all the proper signals. A lot of speakers are missing the appropriate signals that say, hey, I'm a speaker, i.e., when an event organizer ask you for samples of your speaking, do not send them a podcast. While your podcast may have an audience of hundreds or hundreds of thousands of views or people, that's not what when they're thinking about putting you on their live audience stage, a podcast is not a good sample for them or a YouTube video.

But a lot of speakers don't understand their appropriate signals. So part of what we do at the academy is we help you build on your performance credibility. We give, we work, operate in what I refer to as the lab. And that allows people to fix that or establish that. credibility. And then the third credibility we work on is the referral credibility. So I have a speaker bio portal where event organizers can source speakers and you'll have all the appropriate assets on that portal that let speakers or event organizers know, hey, I'm a professional speaker. I want to do this. And this is how I can assist you with your audience with your event

and deliver a successful message. I love that. Kindle. It's, It's just having that, you know, I forget who kind of broke this down to me, like what you're looking for in great coaches, right? One that is going to check you on your blind spots because we all have them, right? And that's kind of what we reveal we can heal. But we need somebody that's going to hold the mirror up for us and not be, I mean, you did a great job, great job, right? Yeah, that was fantastic. They're going to be like, hey, you did good.

Here's where you could get better. Here's where you bombed. Don't ever do this again. Let's do more of this. Right. You need that real-time feedback. But you also want somebody that can open doors for you. That's the real yin and yang and what you're really looking for.

And there's very few people that can do both, right? There's very few people. You can meet great connectors that can open a lot of doors. But there's also sometimes those people haven't put the reps to be able to see the nuances, to be able to see the things. I think one of the things that I'm loving about professional football last year and going into this year is really listening to Tom Brady, being able to just give little insights and little nuance things.

Like, literally, like the little nuances that if you've never thrown a football, like this wouldn't resonate with you. But if you've thrown a football and you've never had formal coaching on. on how to throw a football, but listening to Tom Brady, like, when he was talking, I think they were doing the Chicago Bears game and it was super windy. And he was like talking about where your hand position needs to be in this sea so you can drive the ball. So the sea, you're, you know, you're not throwing with your hand underneath a little bit because that'll put the nose up a little bit or you're here to drive the nose into the wind or up, right?

Like, like, technical piece. Yeah. who like have you ever listened to a broadcast i mean tony romo's fantastic but have you listened to a broadcast where they break that down those little nuanced things like that you're like oh my gosh i learned something literally i was in the yard throwing the football yesterday thinking about where's my c is my hand where it's supposed to be that's what we're looking for right that's that's where having great coaches not only are you you know this this academy with you being able to to have great connections, but you're also there to give them the technical little nuances of like,

dude, your hand position was a little low. That's why the nose of the ball floated on you. And that's why it hung up there and it got picked off. If you get that hand up a little bit, that nose is going to drive and it's not going to get picked off, that's what it takes to really thrive and cut through the noise that is paralyzing so many people right now. I love that you brought that up because I didn't actually haven't even mentioned that. I did build also what I refer to as the studio, which in it lives my five frameworks. And each framework is an acronym for lessons within the academy for all the things I've learned

over the last almost decade of being on stage, right? Both as a, I've keynoted, I've been a panelist, I've moderated, I've emced. And having done all four of those things, like I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work from stage. And so there's this, like, I put together like all my lessons I've learned and I've put them into an on-demand training course. And then I also built, because I'm a nerd, a custom AI bot that my academy students can engage with so that when they're not working with me personally, they can work with this AI bot to help them fine tune with real constructive feedback based upon the frameworks. Right. So it's not designed to be

personal or attack or anything. It's just, hey, this is like based on these frameworks and these lessons that we learned, this is what lands and what doesn't. And here's a weak spot that you might want to work on. Yeah, that's so good. Kindle, there's, you know, the leaders that will, you know, listening that will listen to this are who are feeling stuck right now, right? you've got a couple options of paths to go. Feeling stuck, feeling overwhelmed, like, you know, to get them off of high center, coming from you, coming from, you know, your voice, your experience, what's the next right move for folks out there right now that are stuck,

that are overwhelmed by the noise? Like, what are their moves? What do they need to do right now? Are you talking about from a speaking perspective or a real estate sales? I'm talking about a little bit of both because I think as a leader, knowing that you have a voice, you're wanting to grow. You know you're still kind of have to rely on a little bit of your production. I feel like you've got both resources here,

climber community and then, you know, if they are serious about getting in front of rooms, getting into the academy. But for those that are there, they're like, oh, this is great, but they're still, they're so stuck. They're so paralyzed.

They're so overwhelmed. Like, if you're giving them right things, right order, what are their moves after they listen to this? Yeah, great question. So how I would formulate this. So when I think of Clymer, I think of personal brand. And I think that when you are growing your personal brand, there is so much that you need to be thinking about, which is, you know, how do I diversify my marketing and resources and tools and how do I plug into the right tools? but I would think that if I were to give anyone advice around their personal brand business, it would be to sit down.

This would be what I have done, not just what I would do, what I have done is work with my strategic thought partner. I call her Grace when I joke about when people ask me how I built my businesses and 30 days or less, I'm like it was God and Grace. It was Kendall God and Grace. We did this together. And so I would sit down with the strategic thought. partner and really try to put onto paper the business model, right, and organize it from

an operational standpoint. And the reason why I say that is because a lot of, especially solopreneurs, don't take the time to do that, but I'm going to tell you it's going to be the biggest reason why you cannot scale is because you don't have systems in place. You don't understand your actual business truly. And I think that AI is a shortcut. For those of you that were overwhelmed by it in the past, you now have a shortcut called AI that can help you actually operationalize your business and be more structured and build you to scale. And it's as easy as talking to your AI like it's a friend, right? Like it's diseases talking to them like you might talk to your attorney, talk to your doctor,

talk to your accountant, right? You're having a conversation. You're explaining to them what is and what isn't, asking them what you need and how to organize what you already have. And it's as simple as that structure, right? And you can have your AI business partner help you do that and organize. So if I could give you advice, I would say your business will scale faster once you have done that, no matter what type of, what level you're at with your business is bring it to scale and then work on building. And that's how you start to build your true personal brand. Then next, if you're ready to level up into an industry brand and you are

thinking that that's your next level, that is where the industry speaks academy comes into play. Like we help establish industry brands. And when you're doing that, like where you can start is I have a website called speak on real estate stages.com. I hope you don't mind me plugging that, John. Oh, heck yeah. On that website, I have a couple of different resources that you can go check out. Number one, I have the authority gap, which is going to help you decide where are you at in your level of authority, meaning do you truly have that street credibility and are you ready to take it to the next level of your performance credibility? So go fill out the authority gap and get that feedback. Then also I have the speaker readiness checklist. What's beautiful about this is this is just

an audit for you to take of where you're at with your speaking. How clear are you on your messaging? How tuned in are you into your audiences and who they are and what their pool through, what their takeaway is. And what's beautiful about this checklist is you may not check everything off the list. That doesn't mean you're not ready. It just gives you the next step to work on. Right. So it'll help you the boxes you cannot check off. That's your next step to go work on to grow that particular skill set. And then of course in there I have a blog where I'm adding content all the time about how to move from, you know, experience the contribution and how to build your industry voice and things like that and also a little bit about my journey and the lessons I've learned. So I've got several

blogs up there for you to go and learn and tune in and really start to dive deeper on what that can actually look like for your business. I will tell you being on stages has changed my life. It put me in rooms with CEOs of companies that I otherwise would not have ever met. In fact, I just met the new CMO for NAR, which I'm super excited to meet him because guess what I want him to be is one of my event organizers that I'm working with for the Academy Speak students, right? Like if I'm not in these rooms, I wouldn't be able to make these connections. And so I'm doing this so that as an Academy student, you don't have to chase the stage. You get to just work on your craft, build your skill set, and then be teed up and be ready. So when the opportunity comes,

you're ready to take it to the next level. So good. Kendall, I'm excited. I can't wait to get plugged in with you. So for folks on, you know, more information as it relates to the industry speaks academy, speak on real estate stages.com, being able to to go there, get connected, all the resources, being able to plug in. If they want to jump in with the climber community, how do they do that? Yes, that is climber community.com and climber with no ease. So it's C-L-I-M-B-L-L-L-B-L-L-L-B-L-L-E-R community.com. I love it. And then of course, if you guys have been living under a rock and are not following or paying attention to Kindle, definitely get connected with Kindle. Probably Instagram is probably the best, Kendall, connect with Kendall.

Yes, please. Yes, please. I love that. Kendall, final thoughts as we kind of wrap up here in this interesting year that we're already in. and we're early on here in early February, but man, it seems like we've lived a year already in the first, what are we 40, 41 days in. It's been pretty wild. Yeah. Yeah, my final thought would be I always, I have two quotes that I love and I always share and so whether you've heard them before from me or not, I think they're still relevant.

And so I'm going to share both of them. The first one is by Michael Cunningham from the book, called The Road Less Stupid. And he says, the quality of your life is a direct reflection of what you make non-negotiable. John and I have talked about this one before. But I also say the quality of your business, the quality of your relationships, the quality of your health, the quality of everything that matters to you, is a direct reflection of what you make non-negotiable. So go find a handful of things that you will make non-negotiable to improve the quality of the things that matter to you. And my third second quote, that is my favor, is Alvin Toffler. and he said the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those that cannot read and write,

but those that cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. So please go take time to think about what have you learned, what do you need to unlearn, and what do you need to relearn in order to move your business, your life, your health, your success forward in 2026 and beyond. And I feel the climber community can help you do that. I think so too. I think so. Kendall, you're absolutely amazing. It was great being able to get connected with you again,

coming out of, I know you took some, took some you time at the end of last year. And so being able to jump back in, it's always great connecting with you. And I know our paths are going to cross many, many times this year and into the future. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to your audience. Thank you to you. You are fabulous. And God bless you, my friend. and it is always a pleasure to be in your circle, and I hope that never changes for me. Never will. Kendall, thank you, guys. Get connected, and we'll see you guys soon.

Take care. Thanks for tuning in. If you're done guessing and ready to lead like a real CEO with a custom strategy, real accountability, and proven systems, check out my executive 101 coaching at john kitchens.com. Fill out the application and book your one-on-one call with me. Be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. Catch you on the next one.