3 Strategies to Overcome Career Setbacks with Robert Kennedy III
Episode 158
Struggling with finding your footing in a rollercoaster career journey? Feeling the weight of unexpected challenges as you navigate through life's uncertainties? Look no further!
In this gripping episode of the Unstoppable Grit podcast with Danielle Cobo engages in a deeply insightful conversation with the remarkable Robert Kennedy III. Together, they unravel the power of resilience, personal growth, and unwavering determination in the face of adversity.
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to ...
Make curiosity and relentless questioning your catalysts for growth
Manage career uncertainties with grace and perseverance
Initiate actionable steps toward personal and professional growth
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About the Guest
Robert Kennedy III – RK3 is the founder and CEO of Kennetik Kommunications, a leading communication and presentation training firm for the real estate industry. Through keynotes, workshop programs, coaching, consulting and emcee-ing, Robert works with leaders who need to deliver critical messages with confidence
Connect with Robert Kennedy III:
Website
LinkedIn
About the Host:
Danielle Cobo is an international female speaker for organizations, associations, and the public sector. She works with audiences to harness the grit and resilience to lead through change.
With over 15 years of corporate experience in the medical sales industry, she knows how to build high-performing teams that increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Her expertise includes corporate resilience and burnout prevention.
Danielle is the author of “Unstoppable Grit: Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals” and hosts the globally top-rated podcast "Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo.”
As a former Fortune 500 Senior Sales Manager, she led her team through downsizing, restructuring, and acquisitions to become the #1 sales team in the nation. As a result, she was awarded Region Manager of the Year. Her resiliency motivated her to earn four consecutive national Sales Excellence Awards in a male-dominated industry.
While her husband, a Blackhawk pilot in the Army, deployed to Iraq for a year, Danielle learned to balance a demanding job while caring for their energetic 1.5-year-old twin boys, who possess more energy than a squirrel after a triple espresso.
Danielle’s resilience led her to start her own business, helping others develop the grit, resilience, and courage to thrive in life and business.
Her tenacious attitude stems from being raised by an ambitious mother and recovering from being taken from her father and cast out at 17 years of age.
She is a two-time 60-mile walker and a monster truck driver in Louboutin’s.
Danielle has a bachelor’s in communication with a minor in psychology from the California State University of Fullerton, Certification in Inclusive and Ethical Leadership from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, and accreditation in Human Behavior from Personality Insights. Inc., and Leadership from Boston Breakthrough Academy.
She is a member of the National Speakers Association, the Central Florida National Speakers Association Chapter, Innovation Women, and a former member of Working Women of Tampa Bay. Danielle serves on the Military Advisory, Workforce Development, and Women of Influence Committees of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. She is also a contributing writer for Women's Quarterly Magazine.
Her experience includes serving as a Training Pillar on the Military Spouse Economic Empowerment Zone Committee and Career Transition Advisor for Dallas Professional Women.
Through Danielle's captivating storytelling, content-rich and motivational style, she empowers individuals and organizations to cultivate unwavering resilience, igniting a transformative path towards increased sales, productivity, employee retention, and collaboration.
About the Show:
The Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo explores the journeys of people who have overcome adversity and harnessed the grit and resilience to thrive in all areas of their lives, Guests share how they overcame difficult times - the strategies, mindset shifts, lessons they learned along the way, and actions that propelled them forward. From navigating career setbacks to overcoming personal obstacles, each episode is a testament to grit and resilience.
You'll learn how to develop the grit and resilience to lead yourself and others through change.
Join host Danielle Cobo, keynote speaker and author of "Unstoppable Grit: Break Through the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Your Goals." A new episode is released every Wednesday at 4:00 AM EST.
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Welcome to the Unstoppable Grit podcast. Today, we have a very special guest. He is a former real estate agent, news anchor, voiceover artist, e-learning developer, and podcast host, but he's most known for RK3, Robert Kennedy III.
Pivoting with Purpose
You've got a unique story.
First off, you've had a lot of different roles throughout your career, and they're very different and yet very similar. There seems to be a theme through them. Tell us a little bit about your journey.
That's a big question. So my journey is like most people, not a straight line. It's left, right, upside down, diagonal, all of the different things.
I think one of the things about my journey that may be different than some people's is that. As I look back now, I would say that I wasn't scared of taking some risks.
Let me not say I'm not scared. I took them anyway. And so there were some things that I did, even though they didn't fully make sense, but they were in my mind.
And so I said, Hey, let me try them.
I've gone through, I started in the mental health space out of college, and then I was a news anchor for a radio station for a little bit, and then I went into teaching, and then I started a couple of businesses while I was teaching, and after I did that, then I did real estate for five or six years.
I was back in teaching online and did that for a couple of years and started a business after that. So I started a development or e-learning development company and then after that started to move into the training space. And so moving from training into officially being a professional speaker is the space where I sit today.
Okay, now I'm curious, what was your favorite role that you've had, and why?
I would say being on the radio was probably the most fun thing, and I believe it's probably the same reason I enjoy being on stage. I get to use my voice. I love telling stories. I love connecting and sharing with people.
Preparing to get on stage is nerve-wracking some days, but once I'm there, I enjoy it. I love radio now, which is why I love podcasts and doing live streams.
Well, there you hear it from a seasoned professional speaker that even we get a little nervous before we get on stage.
Well, it's even more than the nerves. And so I wouldn't say that I'm nervous, like, Oh my gosh, this is going to suck; that's not kind of the nerves; it's the anxieties of, you know, Um, did I prepare the right content for this particular audience? Am I going to make the impact that I want in the time that I have?
The process of thinking in my brain and structuring it and putting it all down in the week or days upcoming, wanting to be prepared and not wing it.
When I'm on stage, I want to deliver the best that I can for that meeting planner or event professional. Those are the things that go through my mind and lead to or add to some of the feelings that I have, some of which might be nervousness.
I would say there's not so much nerve. It's more excitement about the culmination of the preparation.
And that's exactly what it takes to be a great speaker: it's less about us and more about whether we're making the impact that we want on our audience. Are we there to just show up and speak, or are we there to help transform lives? And that's at the end of the day. I feel like the biggest motivator when it comes to people who want to speak professionally full-time.
It's not about us. It's about transforming lives.
I'm always working with sales professionals, and I always kind of take that philosophy. If you ever get nervous before a sales presentation, you ever get nervous before anything; it's reframing that mindset of instead of will I do it right?
Yes, there's value in preparation, but will I do it right? It's more, am I adding value? And what can I do to prepare to add value to the conversation at hand, whether it's a conversation with a client, with a customer, or whether it's presenting in front of your colleagues, your peers, or from a big main stage?
Unexpected News, Unexpected Success
You had some risks in life, and one of them, and I know that we've spoken, was that you've started businesses, but one of them you shared was that you had moved your family a pretty long distance and then received some unexpected news. Can you walk us through that?
So we were in the state of Massachusetts, and my wife and I had reached a place where we were getting ready to move to another state. We reached our usefulness, I would say, in the state where we were and wanted to explore some new things. And so she was working for a financial services company. She got a job here in Maryland with another company, a pretty large company.
I was working online at the time, so I was an online faculty member for a university, and we moved our family about an eight-and-a-half-hour drive, about 400 plus miles, from Massachusetts to the state of Maryland. So I had my online gig, I had my salary, and she had her job in Massachusetts, but then when she got this new job, she had a salary bump.
And so we said, Oh my gosh, okay, we're coming; we're going to this new state; we've got X amount of dollars that we can count on. As we're traveling, as we're moving, we've got three kids at this point, below the age of five. My oldest, my daughter, was about four and a half; my son was two; and then we had a five-month-old baby.
And so we move, and we get to the state of Maryland, and about 10 days after we get here, I get a call that my position is being eliminated and that I don't have a job anymore. Now, I've got, again, three kids below the age of five. My daughter's getting ready to start kindergarten shortly after that. And we're like, okay, holy smoke, what do we do?
I start applying for jobs. I've been a teacher for a while, so I'm applying for teaching jobs. I'm applying for jobs in the college or collegiate space. And I'm applying for a lot of different things. Nothing's happening. I'm not getting any calls back. I'm not getting any interviews. I'm not seeing anything happening.
So, this happens for about five months. Five to six months. So, we move in about July up until November or December. I still didn't have anything. What happened was that I started to do some stuff in the field of instructional design. I have a master's degree in instructional technology.
And so I came across someone who wanted me to; they needed someone to redo their PowerPoint or their teaching materials and put them into an accessible online format, which I had some skill set in. So I did that. I have some money for it. I did it a few more times, got some more money for it, and then after a few times, I was like, Hey, wait a minute, I can make some money at this.
And so I officially launched a contracting company based on that or became a contractor based on that. And then ultimately formed a company and hired some other contractors to begin building courses for organizations.
So it started as a situation: you're excited, you're moving, you're going to an area where you've got dual incomes, and as you're driving, with three kids under the age of five, you find out you lose your job.
That has got to be devastating.
How Life's Detours Can Lead to Greatness
Our life is not linear.
When we envision our life one way and it doesn't go that specific direction, it can feel deflating, and frustrating, but in the unexpected, there can be a lot of greatness that comes out of it. And it's just a matter of whether we're doing the pivot.
And that's exactly what it sounded like you did. You pivoted and you looked at Where can I be resourceful? What are the skill sets that I currently have that I could potentially find some work from? Yeah. While still applying for a job, it ended up being a great business for you.
I think sometimes you frame it as a pivot and that seems purposeful.
I've got to figure out how to keep us moving in the direction that we want. And so that was kind of what it was. And looking back, the pivot made sense. It contributed to the direction that I ended up going, but man, in the middle of it while we were doing it, it didn't feel like it made sense at all.
Do you kind of feel like you were just in survival mode? That is what it sounds like.
I especially think part of it was being a teacher. Teaching jobs only come around during certain points of the year, unlike other corporations where, you know, you can get hired in November; you could get hired in March, February, or whenever.
It was kind of this additional layer of struggle for me.
Like we said, it's not linear, but it's hard when you're going through it and you're in the midst of it. You feel like you've finally gotten everything you wanted. Everything that I dreamed of for you was moving and both of you guys have these great jobs for us.
But looking back, that's the area where you grow; it is not necessarily as easy. It's not supposed to be easy. If it is, then you're not experiencing growth.
It's like going to the gym and just lifting weights that you can handle easily; if you do that, then you might maintain, but you're not going to grow muscle; you're not going to get stronger. So to get stronger, you've got to lift stuff that tears the muscle fibers and creates the soreness and pain so that it can make way for new, larger, longer fibers that are stronger.
Thriving Through Life's Unexpected Turns
What do you think were some of the steps that you took to find your way through that particular situation?
We can go in two directions. We can go into this spiral down; everything's happening to me, or we can find a way to make something happen through it.
Sometimes it takes longer than others, but were some of the steps that you took to get in the right mindset so that you could move forward after hearing that devastating news?
Well, I've always been a curious person. I've always been a questioner.
I started to ask questions. I started to connect with people. I didn't withdraw into myself, even though, by my nature, I'm an introvert who wants to use labels, but I started to push against my comfort zone and started to go out and go to events, ask people questions, and start to connect and make calls to people who I didn't even think I had any business speaking to.
I just really began to try to get as much information as possible. I started to seek mentorship. There was a man who had a multimillion-dollar business, and he went to my church, I chased him for about two years to get a meeting. And I just wanted to get in the space of people who had a greater capacity or a greater vision than I did at the time.
And so as I did that, that helped me. And sometimes, you know, I did one of the things I did, and I couldn't even afford it at the time, but I also invested in coaching. I hired a business coach. Who was helping me through that early growth stage in my business? And as a matter of fact, that business exploded.
It blew up. It didn't do well in a good way. It crashed and burned.
But being with that business coach, one of the big things that he worked with me on wasn't so much business strategy. It was a mindset.
And that transformed how I viewed things and the way that I operated. He introduced me to a lot of different books.
There were just so many things that were introduced to me that I didn't focus on, okay? This is how you make a dollar. This is how you do this thing financially. It was really about, Hey, you've got to believe. You can do it. You've got to believe that you're worth it. You've got to believe that the space that you're in right now is not your final space.
You've got to believe that everything that happens to you comes together to create greatness or success. If you decide that you are going to get depressed about it, or if you decide that you are going to get stuck in that space, then that's what you do. But if you decide you're going to push through it if you decide that you want more. Then you take steps forward, even if they are small.
And so it's about taking what seems insignificant, what seems small, and what seems like 1%. And adding that over time consistently and getting better each day to, and then when you look back, you're like, Holy smoke, my gosh, look how far I've come.
And that is starting with the mindset. Because when we believe in ourselves. other people will believe in us.
And it's those small steps—believing in ourselves, having the right mindset, putting together goals, and making strides along the way. And that's when we achieve success.
I was just having a conversation with one of my clients the other day, and she shared with me that she had just earned President's Club for the first time.
Nice. I've earned the President's Club before. It's the award that you get for top sales performance. You get to go on this lavish vacation. It's amazing. I do miss those vacations. They were quite nice. Everything's paid for. But to work with somebody and to see where they are right from the beginning, where they're feeling like they're just stuck,
And then you start to work with them over a three- to six-month period. And you start to see the confidence that they build in themselves and how they believe that they can achieve their goal. And then they do that is one of the most rewarding experiences.
Now get to asking yourself, What type of mindset are you in? How are you, uh, how are you approaching situations? Are you looking at it? What can I learn and grow? And then also, who are the people that you're surrounding yourself with?
What type of success have they had? Are the people that you're surrounding yourself with the type of people who are growing with you or who have had success that you want to learn from? And then, in what ways are you investing in yourself? Investing, whether it's reading books or investing in coaching for yourself, is important, but to show up, be yourself, and be unstoppable, you have to look at whether you have the right mindset.
Are you surrounding yourself with the right people? And are you investing in yourself? And I'll leave that with you.
