$6K on her first offer in week 1.
Signed a $6,000 mental health workshop in her first week, the first paid speaking work of her career.
Watch the interview$6K on her first offer in week 1Kendra B. is VP of Elevation Real Estate and the owner of Butterfield Training and Coaching. She has 20 plus years in apartment and residential property management, and she helps residential management companies hold on to their clients.
She came to Carla unsure that the two halves of her would fit together. She wanted to work on mental health, and her expertise was apartment management. She had spoken plenty of times but had never once been paid for it, and the question underneath all of it was whether she was worth charging for.
In her first week she sent the DMs, priced the offer after a round of market research, and signed a three hour workshop on mental health in the workplace for $6,000. Other prospects came back asking about webinars.
The interview
Carla Cherry with Kendra B..
This is Carla Cherry. I'm sitting here with Kendra B. She is the VP of Elevation Real Estate, as well as the owner of Butterfield Training and Coaching. She helps residential management companies increase client retention with her accredited programs and her proprietary coaching. Welcome, Kendra. We are in the first month. What has been your biggest win so far?
The very first week I jumped in and got my very first offer. And it was a $6,000 win just for jumping in.
Within the first week, one of the things we do is throw you right out there. Five DMs a day, straight in front of your audience, directly contacting people. And you came back with a $6,000 win. What was it for?
It was for a three hour workshop of my content, to discuss mental health in the workplace with a group of people.
You've been 20 plus years in the apartment and residential management space. A total rock star there, but you're on a big mission to help people with mental health. You came to me and said, I'm not sure if this is going to work. And in the power hour I said yes, you can blend these two. Then you pitched to your warm audience, your center of influence. Was it a little bit scary?
Oh, yeah. Talking about mental health, the first thing we talk about is being able to talk about our own mental health. And so, somebody who suffers from anxiety, for me it felt like cold calling. For me to be that cold call salesperson was super, super scary, which is why I started with that sphere of influence first. Even though my hands were sweating sending this DM to somebody, I was like, well, at least one person is going to remember me. We do the five DMs a day and I try to get in 10, so that way I have a good pool of people. That first week it can be really, really scary, but my recommendation would be just jump in and do it, because it works.
The trick there is finding the gap. You know that industry so well, and you know where the gaps are. Client retention right now is huge, and you know that because you're in the industry. So even though it's scary, and it might be a little messy in the beginning, you put it out there and it came back. So you DM'd them. What was the next move?
I DM'd all the people and then a couple of people actually got back to me, and there were a couple who wanted three hour workshops. In addition to that, other people asked, well, what would you do for a one hour webinar? There were other things involved in that, but that just happened to be the biggest win.
And so they came back and they're like, how much would you charge? At the time we hadn't covered that yet, and I was like, I don't know what to do. So what I did was my research. Anybody in the apartment industry will know, we did a comp survey. That's what we call them, and most people wouldn't know what to call them, because you're comparing yourselves to other people. So I went out and researched people with my experience doing trainings and stuff. What would they charge? And that's how I learned to come back with that offer. And that was scary, to put a really big price tag out there. Because when I first started, I was thinking more, oh, if I charge like $750. That would have been my initial thought. So when I started doing the research and I found out that people were charging that much and even more, it was still scary to put that number out there, because $6,000 is a lot of money.
It's scary the first time. It's scary to say the number, it's scary to write the number. But then once you do, and someone says yes, no big deal, then there's the second and the third and the fourth. What I really want to point at is that you took action before you had all the answers. That's the whole point of being in the arena. You got instant feedback: yes, we need this, this is how much it would be, this is the typical duration. And then you went with it. So how does it feel to make that offer and land it, and to be getting paid $6,000 for a workshop that you created?
Well, this is also my first paying gig. $6,000 out the gate. Normally all my other speaking stuff is volunteer work. So it was also that thinking of, am I worth it? That imposter syndrome that I'm sure everyone gets. And it's like, am I really worth it? And to put out an offer like that and for someone to say, okay, let's do it, like no big deal. They believed in me. And part of the feedback I had from that was that they already knew me personally as a brand, because I worked really hard in this industry. So they were like, you already have such a great brand, it's trustworthy, we would love to work with you.
And then doing everything that you give us to do, as long as you follow it, it's working. That's the great thing. Everything you give us is actionable items, which I've never had before. And it's keeping me not honest, what's the word I'm looking for, consistent. I have to be consistent, because anyone who knows me knows I am so competitive. So the fact that this is gamified really gets a spark under me. Because I want to win.
People sometimes giggle about the gamified part, but that's what makes it work. I tell people it's like the thing you don't want to do on a Thursday, you're going to do it. The stuff you'd push to tomorrow, you've got to do it, because you've got to get those points.
And it's not just the competitive part, it's the whole entire pack. Everyone is so supportive. I've had conversations with the other players who aren't on my team, because we're all supportive of each other. And there's learning the consistency, because after you get the consistency down and we go through these 12 weeks, you've built great habits. So you're building good habits in us. I know that I'm never going to go back to not doing it, because it's going to be a consistent thing in my life.
It's your new set point, your new normal. One of the things I realized after doing 75 Hard, which inspired me to build this program, is that I have to up-level myself as well as my business. They're hand in hand. We're three weeks in. How do you feel different versus three weeks ago?
I feel better. From the first week, when you're in something new it feels kind of clunky, or it can. But after working through the process, even this third and fourth week, we're already building that consistency. So it's getting easier to understand the goal setting. I had a hard time with the goal setting to begin with, because it was new to me. But now my goals are becoming not generalized. They're bigger goals for things that I want to hit. I look at it like, in a perfect world, if I could have everything I wanted, those are the goals I'm going after now, and breaking those down into how do I get to that. So for anyone who's terrible at goal setting, this program helps with that too. I love the way you have the goals set up and how we work on them daily, because your goals do change from day to day.
I tell everybody, what you write down in the beginning, you're going to hit certain things by the 30 day and then you're going to have to write bigger goals. Is that what I'm hearing you say, that you can actually go big?
Yes. It's almost become like affirmations, which is really weird. But those goals really do become your daily affirmations, especially the three you really want to accomplish that day. It's like, I'm going to accomplish this, and this is what I'm going to do to get to the next thing that I want to do. So I'm doing the things I need to do right now, so that way I can get to the things I want to do.
You don't run a triathlon in a day. You put the daily exercises in and then all of a sudden you're running a triathlon. It's the same with business. I can see you speaking on major stages, because you've hit something and you know it. Employee retention is a major issue, mental health is a major issue, and you're answering both. Kudos to you for sending that DM in the first week with sweat on your brow. You landed it because you did your homework, you knew there was a gap, and you had the courage to reach out. For those watching, if they're on the fence about joining the program, what would you say to them?
Just jump in and do it. Don't be on the fence. There's no reason to sit on the fence. Leading up to it, I had never done anything like this before. I had never even heard of anything like this before, and I was like, is this something that's going to work? I'm not sure. The tools that you give the group are indispensable. Myself, I could never recreate something like this. I couldn't even start from scratch and create it. So if you're that kind of person and you don't know where to start, right here, this is where you start.
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