Communication Skills for Real Estate Agents, Leaders, and Entrepreneurs

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (00:00)
I’m not even going to write or use the word effectively. I’m going to use the word more powerfully.

Quentin (00:05)
Whew! Okay.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (00:09)
And here’s why. ⁓ When something is effective, it’s good, it’s useful, but it’s average.

When something is powerful, it’s transformational. When something is powerful, it pushes things forward

Quentin (02:06)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I am excited to be here today. I have a fantastic guest. Now, I may geek out just a little bit, because y’all know I try to be the best host I can be. Y’all know I put in the work. I put in the hours. I’m very intentional. And so this gentleman, he literally

Part of what he did is literally teach people how to show up and be more effective. He helps people with communication. So y’all already know I take an abundance of notes, but you better believe today I will be taking notes. I’ll be actively listening, but I will be taking notes on today. And so I am so excited to introduce you all to Mr. Robert Kennedy III. Mr. Robert, how are you doing today, sir?

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (02:57)
I’m doing fan dog on tastic. How about that? Let’s go. ⁓ why? Why?

Quentin (03:07)
You see, y’all see, right? You see, y’all

been watching me. Have we ever experienced anything like that? Y’all been watching me. And this what makes this even more special. Y’all know I get very territorial. When I got people that’s in my neck of the woods, you know they get all the love. So this gentleman from my neck of the woods too. So Mr. Robert, sir, you get the red carpet today, man. I’m so glad you’re feeling good, sir. Thank you for the intro. I told you I’m excited about this episode. No pressure. I know you’re going to be yourself.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (03:13)
Ayyyy, let’s go.

Yes, sir.

Quentin (03:37)
But I’m just excited because I just know it’s just going to be good. And so I want to do this. I’m going type, I want to dive in. So I would love for you to tell the people, what’s your main focus these days? If you don’t mind, give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got to where you are now. And then I kind of led a little bit with it, but also tell them where you are in the world, man. People love to know where people are geographically. So Mr. Robert, you have the floor, sir.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (04:00)
Oh man.

Well, let’s start out with the where you are in the world. I’m in the ABC DMV. Yes, we are in the place. We’re in the space looking at my face in Maryland. That’s where I am. Yeah, so I’m in Maryland. I grew up in New York City, man. I grew up in the Bronx. And so that’s the space from a geographical perspective. My journey, grew up in the Bronx, moved to Massachusetts.

Quentin (04:15)
Yeah, yeah.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (04:30)
for a little while. When I was in Massachusetts, I did quite a few different things, man. I was a radio news anchor for a little bit. I was a teacher. I was a high school teacher, taught physics and biology for about 10, 8 years, actually. And then I taught online for a university for a couple of years in their biology department. And while I was doing that, I was a real estate agent for a little while. I started out with

ERA key realty. I

my first business card around here somewhere. I should whip it out and show that to you. I did that, and then I was with Remax for a little bit up there. And then we moved to Maryland. when I came to Maryland, licenses were not reciprocal, so I didn’t get my license again when I was down here. So I started an e-learning company, a course development.

I started doing that. We developed courses for a little while. And then as I was doing that, was teaching classes. And every time I taught a class, people would say, hey, are you a speaker? Are you a motivational speaker? Are you a speaker? Are a speaker? You do anything else? You speak. And I said, no, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Because I didn’t know that people got paid to speak outside of my daddy. My daddy was a preacher. So I’m a PK, son of a preacher, man. So I said, listen, that’s the only paid speaker that I know. And he didn’t get that much.

So, so, so, so yeah, so that was, that was the, the journey people started asking that. And I started to look into professional speaking, became a professional speaker in about 2017 and started a training company, did a lot of leadership training and that morphed into communication training, got my real estate license again in 2022 and decided that, Hey, you know what?

Quentin (06:47)
Yeah

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (07:13)
I don’t want to leave my training company stuff during the day and put on my real estate hat at night. Let’s just merge the two. started to transfer the content and the information that I teach into the real estate industry. And so a lot of what I do now is we do a lot of real estate conferences, conventions, brokerages, speaking with the agents and the pros there about how they can communicate and connect more effectively to generate ⁓ more leads.

Quentin (07:41)
Yeah. Whoo. Yes, sir. Well, thank you, man. Thank you for the story. Thank you for the journey. I was writing things down as you talk, and I’m going take some of those things back to you. I got a lead with ⁓ my dad’s been a pastor for 40 years. So I hear you that. And it’s interesting. He’s talking about didn’t get paid that much. He wasn’t speaking that I know that got paid, right? ⁓

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (07:48)
Yes, sir.

Love it.

You

Quentin (08:09)
I started preaching when I was 14, so I did start getting paid for some speaking or whatever. And I actually kind of, pushed it away because I didn’t want to get caught up in just getting paid to speak for God. And so that’s a whole nother story. But man, you grew up in the Bronx, moved to Massachusetts. You was a high school teacher. I you said biology, right? Did I hear you did some college teaching as well? Did I hear that too? Did some college teaching?

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (08:22)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yes, I did. Yep.

Quentin (08:38)
radio, real estate agent, you build the, I think, e-learning, course development. You are a speaker, your dad was a speaker, you took up professional speaking 2017, kind of morphed that into communications, built a communication business, and you merged real estate and communications. Did I kind of sum some stuff up?

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (08:59)
Yes,

you did, you got it perfectly.

Quentin (09:02)
I do this because I love the journey. believe Kobe Bryant, before he passed away, said, nothing in this world moves without story. So we all have a story. We all have a narrative. We all have our life’s journey. And so I say this, Mr. Robert, probably every podcast episode, destiny has no wasted moments. You know what What we’ve been through in life, we don’t waste nothing. Like the people who we are, it is a book called The Body Keeps the Score, right?

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (09:07)
Yeah.

That’s right.

Quentin (09:33)
God designed us the body to retain. That’s why it is in DNA. We are designed to retain. So the journey teaches us who we are. It molds us to who we are. The people that we are today is because of the journey. So I would love to know, throughout your journey, what has the journey taught you about yourself? Has it taught you discipline, resilience? What has the journey taught you about you?

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (09:33)
I love that. Yep.

All of that discipline, it’s taught resilience, it’s taught

me what’s the best way to say this to not compare, to recognize that your journey is your own. The time that you get to something is your time. It’s not somebody else’s timeframe or timeline. So all of those things there and that not everybody around you is going to understand your journey.

Some people are going to criticize your journey or make it seem like you should be at a certain place or that you should be doing something a certain way because that is the capacity of their understanding. But it’s not your journey. They have not seen your journey through your eyes. They have not lived and had the experiences that you have had and they haven’t felt them and been affected by them.

in the same way, their math is not your math. The stuff that’s been in your brain and how you’ve interpreted certain elements of your life is not how they have interpreted it. And so it’s their timeline is different than your timeline.

Quentin (11:50)
Whew, thank you for that reflective answer. Thank you for that thoughtful answer. I was crippled by comparison for years, literally probably decades, if I’m going to be honest. I literally had to take a whole year and really work out why was I comparing myself to other people. And when I say it was crippling, it crippled me. And I had to take a year.

really flesh out why I’m comparing myself to other people. That translated into another year, me realizing that I was living in jealousy and envy of other people. Then that took me another year for me to rest in what my abilities was in. And now this year, I’m in a state of curiosity. I’m curious about everything. Like, why do I do this? Why do I do that? Curious about how to make things work. And I say now, you know, they say curiosity killed the cat. I actually say curiosity saved my life.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (12:29)
Mm.

Quentin (12:50)
because it literally got me curious about my health. Why do I eat certain things? What am I using for coping mechanisms? And so I love, everything you just said, just about comparison, learning who you are, learning to be proficient in the skills that you have. And I tell people, some people are proficient in drills and hammers. Some people are proficient in spices and spatulas and flour. Like we all have our own skillset. And so, man, thank you, brother, for that very, very and thoughtful answer.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (13:05)
Yeah.

Yep.

Quentin (13:20)
And I just want to say, I ask that question and make that statement about destiny and what has it taught you. Because I tell business owners at the core of every everything in your business is you. You are the core of everything. So you need to be able to look back, reflect, know your why and see kind of how you got to where you are. And that way, when you know who you are, you know what to do. And so, man, I appreciate again your thoughtful answer.

I would love to know what is your next goal? What are you looking to solve or scale next, Mr. Roberts?

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (13:54)
Well, as I mentioned earlier, well, probably in the pre show, I’m scaling my company right now. We are in the space where we have operated a certain way for quite some time. And what happens is you reach a cap, right? You reach, you’ve only got two hands, you’ve only got two legs, you’ve only got 24 hours in the day. And with that,

You can only do so much. Some people say, okay, my gosh, let me figure out how I can do more. But here’s what some people don’t recognize, right? You’re racing against time here. And as you get older, our bodies don’t get faster, we get slower. But we conversely are trying to do more as we are getting slower, right? As our eyes.

Quentin (14:47)
So true. So true.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (14:50)
are getting dimmer. Doesn’t the Bible talk about that too? As our eyes get dimmer, right? As our muscles and our limbs get weaker.

Quentin (14:53)
Yes, sir.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (15:42)
And yeah, and health will help you to stave that off for as long as possible, right? But as that is happening, the irony is that some of the of us are trying to do more and more and more because we are swallowed up in social media. We’re swallowed up in comparison, as you mentioned.

We’re swallowed up in the highlight reels of everybody else and what they’re doing. And we’re not seeing their struggle. We’re not seeing what people are faking. We’re not seeing all the crazy stuff behind the scenes. We’re doing all of that and we’re trying to do more. So what I’m looking at is, okay, how do I now operate my gift through the lens of strategy? How do I operate in my through the lens of

Quentin (16:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (16:28)
of dream execution, of just putting out the idea and delegating, ⁓ identifying, and equipping people to be able to execute on that for me. At scale.

Quentin (16:49)
I told you I’m going to be writing and you talk, man. You talking, sir. Yeah, you talk. You talking. When you said dream execution, one of the things I thought of is very few people dream awake. And when I say that, meaning that sometimes in order to dream, you have to slow down. You have to stop doing more. You have to be in a state where you can rest, recover, and rejuvenate.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (16:53)
You

Mmm.

Quentin (17:19)
in order to dream again. A lot of people, they’re trying to dream, but like you said, they’re trying to go faster. And in these stages, sometimes about life, we need to pull back so that we can dream and dream execute. So how can you execute on a dream that if you can’t even capture the dream, let it all put in strategy for the dream. And so I love the fact of slowing down. That’s something I had to do 2024.

was my year of slowing down. stripped back some of my income, like the things that I was doing for income, I pulled it back. And I’m gonna tell you why. Can you talk about strategy? And I talk about God. I’m not trying to make this religious podcast, but I talk about God. One of the strategies that God used, if you believe in the Bible, if you believe he created the world, One of the strategies that he used was to do something one day, maybe two things, and then go to another day. And then another day.

and then another day and then the last day he rested. If we talk about God Almighty, he could have just said everything be done all at one time. But I believe he modeled the strategy for us to be able to space out the way we move so that we can execute in a way that’s not overwhelming. And I believe a lot of us are overwhelmed because we don’t know how to slow it down, rest for juvenile enough to dream execute. I really believe that.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (18:40)
Yeah,

one of the things I recognized about myself one time was ⁓ when I realized that when I got my ideas or my best thoughts was when I was in the shower. Right. And so I was like, OK, why is it that it happens when I’m in the shower?

And it wasn’t until one day that I sat and thought about it I recognized, said, there’s several things that happen when you’re in the shower. Number one, you’re naked.

Quentin (19:15)
Bro, they ain’t ready for this. Keep talking.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (19:16)
Number one, you’re

naked, you’re vulnerable, you’re not covered up by anything. That’s number one. Number two, it’s just you and the water and your thoughts. Right? There’s nothing else. You’re not scrolling social media.

The radio is probably not playing except some of y’all that have the speakers in the shower. But anyway, all right, that’s another story. All right, but you’re not listening to anything else. You are not having conversations with somebody else. You’re not running the kids to a basketball game. You are not ⁓ running on the phone. You’re not hiding from any, you’re not executing. There’s no emails that you’re checking. It’s just you.

Quentin (19:42)
Yeah.

before.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (20:09)
your nakedness.

and your thoughts and the water, right? And so as I recognize, I said, man, when I come out of this, when all of us come out of this, what do we do? We put our clothes on, we put our masks on, we put all the stuff on, and we run back and we go back into the busy of the world. So.

If I want to dream, if I want to think clearly, if I want to find some clarity, where are the spaces that I can create in my life that mimic my shower time? Yeah, you could, I mean, you could spend all day in the shower. Your water bill’s gonna be super high. But how can you, how can I find and create spaces where?

Quentin (20:55)
Yeah.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (21:05)
I mimic or I create the experience or the thought space of the shower. And so for some of us that is meditating in the morning. mean, one of the practices that I’ve done is I, you know, not successful every single morning, but I try to get up early. I get up earlier, 5.30, 5.00, 6.00, 6 o’clock when my kids were all here at the same time, it will be 4.30.

In the morning, I would get up before the rest of the world was awake. I’d get up when it was still dark outside.

so that I wasn’t hearing sirens. wasn’t hearing, the only thing, I was hearing maybe the birds, some of them were still asleep. So it’s that time when you can download and think and express. sometimes I was working. Sometimes I did work. If I had to write a speech, my goodness, I’d get up at three o’clock and that’s my best focus time.

Quentin (21:50)
Sulture.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (22:10)
I’d get it done. But we’ve got we’ve got to create that vulnerable, naked, thoughtful, non-distractable space in order to be able to really be at our deepest and best where it comes to our dreams, man.

Quentin (22:28)
So well said, man. So well said. So you teach people how to show up more effectively. So give us some strategies of what you just said or even something else, right? So how can you help people show up more effectively for speaking, for whatever? Talk to the people, man. How can they show up more effectively, Mr.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (22:54)
I’m not even going to write or use the word effectively. I’m going to use the word more powerfully.

Quentin (23:00)
Whew! Okay.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (23:03)
And here’s why. ⁓ When something is effective, it’s good, it’s useful, but it’s average.

When something is powerful, it’s transformational. When something is powerful, it pushes things

When something is powerful, it breaks the mold. My wife likes to say sometimes that I don’t know my own strength. I’ll close a closet door or I’ll push or I’ll bump into her by mistake. And she’s like, dude, why are you pushing me so hard?

I’m like, what are you talking about? She said, you got heavy hands. You should feel yourself when you do that. And that’s power. There’s a response that happens when something is powerful versus when something is just effective. And so I show people, I teach people, I equip people, I help people to unlock.

the power that’s already inside of them through their stories, through their experiences, through their language superpower, right? They’ve already been doing something. They’ve already got gifts. They’ve already got something that’s unique. You know what the most amazing thing for me is this. We have 8 billion people on this earth. And if we think about it, 8 billion is the people that we’ve got here currently.

If I add history into that, we are probably in trillions and quadrillions and quintillions, right? And in all of that time, there’s been no one who has been my exact biological duplicate. There’s been no one who has had my exact physiological and geographical experiences.

There’s nobody who has shown up or has had the life exactly as I have. There’s nobody who’s got the exact gift that I’ve got. And so the thing that you have, the gift that you’ve been carrying, the stuff that you have inside you that we hide because we think it’s not good enough, because we think it’s not groundbreaking enough, because we think it’s not ⁓ dramatic or traumatic enough, the cost people say, my gosh, you know, no.

There’s something that you’ve experienced that somebody else is just waiting to hear how you came it, how you overcame it. I’ll give a quick example and then I’ll let you talk again. So when I was teaching, I used teach physics and every year I would try to explain a problem or a solution to my students. And every year there was at least one student who would say, I don’t get it Mr. K. And I said, all right.

Let me try to explain this problem another way. So I’d go to the board and I draw something out and I write the formula and I say, okay, this is like this, this and I draw the lines and the arrows and I would say, got it. How you got it now. You understand? And they would look and they would tilt their head and now I don’t get it. Mr. K. And so I said, all right, cool. Let me try to explain that third way. And I try to explain it a third way and then pick up a prop or I do something and I wheel something across the room and say distance.

divided by time is velocity and this is this and this is how that works. And I’m saying, you get it now. I don’t get it Mr. K. And almost every year the same thing would happen. Another student would come across the room, saddle up next to the student and say, okay, this, this, this, they do explain it. the student who didn’t understand would now say, ⁓ my gosh, I got it now. And the funny thing was the student explaining it would say the same thing that I just said.

They couldn’t hear it from my voice, but they heard it from the other student’s voice. And I use that example to say that your voice is assigned to somebody specific.

There’s stuff that somebody else can say that the person who needs it will only be able to hear it from you.

Because your story, your experience, your situation, your spin, your perspective, your sweet sauce that you put on top of it is the language that they understand in that moment. And they need you to be able to navigate it.

Quentin (27:58)
Brother, man, so I’m going say, don’t, I didn’t want to over talk you, but I want to hammer home what you just said. And I’m going to share a little, vulnerable story. It ain’t too vulnerable, a little vulnerable. So I have a group of accountability brothers, right? And I don’t believe in doing life by myself, right? And so I believe in confession, confession faults once another so you can be healed, right?

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (28:10)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

stuff.

Quentin (28:27)
So there was a lady at the gym. I’m married, right? Married. Lady at the gym. Super attracted to her. Super attracted to her. So I started confessing to one of my brothers. I was like, man, I’m attracted to this lady. I said, but I’m smart enough now to understand that attraction is not the problem. That there are people and things that attract us. A lot of times, men, when we see a woman that attract us,

We only think we’re to be attracted to them physically. We only think that that should lead to some kind of physical domination. I think you know where I’m going with that, right? But every time that’s not necessarily why you are attracted to them. You are attracted, but it could be for business. It could be maybe you could speak a word into their life. It’s all types of reasons why you could be attracted to this person. So when I hear you talk about people’s voice, there are people that you are just going to attract.

just because of a frequency, because of a aura, ⁓ there is gonna be a reason why you are attracted to this person.

there are people that’s like you said, that just want to hear your voice, going to gravitate to your influence. And you just said it so eloquently, we all have our superpower. We all have our voice. And I love the fact that you are empowering.

You said powering, I’m gonna say empowering people to use their voice, their story, because it matters. My main thing is helping people understand that they have a story to tell. That’s why I was so excited, man. I knew this episode was really gonna hit me in my core, and so it really has, And I mean, could talk to you, we could easily talk, easily for another 30 minutes, if not an hour.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (29:56)
Yeah. Yep.

Yeah.

Quentin (30:22)
But there’s so many different places

I’m sure you and I can go. ⁓ But man, I thank you so much for coming on. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (30:37)
Easiest way right now is to go to robertkennedy3.me. That is my everything page, all the programs that we’re doing, all our social media talent. You know what? Actually, let me change that. ⁓ I’m going to send them to amplifiedvoicehq.com.

AmplifiedVoiceHQ.com. That is the space where we are building our community and yeah.

Quentin (31:08)
Now listen, all of that is being transcribed. So it wasn’t a show notes, but I wrote that down for myself just so we clear. I had to make sure I had that down for myself. Let me say three things to you very, very sincerely. I say these to people, but I really mean what I’m about to say. So one, thank you for your time. I literally believe time is our most precious commodity. I think what we do, we should do to be able to decide what we do without time, right?

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (31:12)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

Quentin (31:37)
So the fact that you decided to give us your time, I greatly appreciate that. I value that. Thank you so much. Secondly, thank you for your story, for your narrative, for the gift of your vulnerability and transparency. Like I said, I believe what Kobe said, nothing in this world moves without story. And so I literally believe that words create worlds. And so the fact that you spoke the way you did, I believe has planted seeds in people.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (31:56)
Right.

Quentin (32:07)
and literally can course correct them and really cause them to create a whole new world, a whole new paradigm for them. Like I really believe it’s how powerful stories are. And so thank you for your story today. Lastly, man, thank you for your mindset, the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you coming through,

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (32:27)
Thank you for being hospitable and opening the door, my friend. My neighbor.

Quentin (32:31)
Yeah, yeah.

Yes, sir. I’m to shoot you a gram, one of those grams real quick. But man, listen, y’all heard Mr. Robert. Please look into the show notes, everything he mentioned, how to get in contact with them, the inner show notes, connect with them. I’m telling you now, I’m going be connecting with them. I’m telling you now. But definitely make sure you’re subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people.

Robert Kennedy III – RK3 (32:40)
Yes, sir.

Quentin (33:00)
just like Mr. Robert. So sir, I say thank you again and everyone else. Y’all have a fantastic day.