Success & Purpose – Kaley Kallman

“Your gift is the source of your value. Your value determines how much you make in life. You get paid for the value you bring to the earth.”
– Dr. Myles Munroe

It’s an enlightening moment when you realize that your future does not lie in front of you, it is already inside you. Little by little Kaley Kallman is manifesting the future she already possesses – because even as a teenager, she knew she was built for more.

“I’ve worked hard since I was 15-years-old,” says Kaley. “I started as a hostess at a restaurant. I was really into earning money, not to just earn money, but for the reason of working toward being independent. Then I became a server and when I got older, eventually a bartender. But even though I was doing that and going to college for a general studies degree, I didn’t feel fulfilled, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted. Then this guy came into the bar and he told me about an opportunity. He invited me to learn more. The rest is history.”

History is being read, but it’s also being written and Kaley is writing hers daily. She took advantage of that opportunity and now serves as a Satellite Division Sales Leader with USHEALTH Advisors. Still shy of her 27th birthday, Kaley has brought her work ethic and vision to USHA and in the span of fewer than five years has issued more than three-and-a-half million dollars in individual health sales and nearly 12-million-dollars as a team leader.

But while success leaves clues, it also never comes easy. Kaley started her career with the company in December of 2015, in an office near Orlando.

“I was in a tiny little office in Longwood, Florida,” Kaley remembers. “I was by far the youngest one in there with a few older guys, in fact, I think I was the only girl. I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to blow these guys out of the water… they don’t know what’s coming.’ “I was like a sponge, not just in that office but in our regional office as well. Every single Thursday, for the first two months I was at USHA, I would drive to Don Dente’s Regional office and spend the day. I learned so much from people like Cassidy Dente, she helped me so much early on, she was a role model and a huge influence on me.

I also spent time with Taylor Dente and Ron Leonard. Ron started around the same time I did and he hit the ground running – he was just able to do so much so fast and I learned a ton from him too.”

“I also reached out to some of the biggest producers across the country at USHA as well. I would just send them a message and say, ‘hey you don’t know me, I’m new and I really admire you. Do you mind if I pick your brain about how you’ve accomplished so much?’ “I was surprised by how many were receptive to helping me. They were because it’s just such a giving group of people all across the country. But it was still a tough going. There were weeks I didn’t know how I was going to pay my bills, but I told myself there was no way I was going back to the bar. So I battled it out the first few months and within six months’ time I got promoted to a leadership role as a Field Training Agent. I thought, ‘I just got the hang of this, now I have to teach it to others as well!’”

But challenges are what make us stronger as human beings, and in business, it’s only by accepting the next challenge that you can rise to the next level. The trick is to see how others have paved the road ahead of you. For Kaley, that has meant immersing herself in the lessons of leadership.

“I listen to podcasts every morning, motivational videos, read books on leadership, and then discuss them with other members of my team. I go to seminars and have bought the team tickets to attend as well.”

While molding herself into a leader presented a significant challenge, it still wasn’t as big as what she describes as the pivot point in her life… leaving Orlando.

“I grew up, lived my whole life in Orlando,” says Kaley. “But last year, right before the holidays, the regional leaders of the company met to discuss where they might expand offices in different areas of the country. To grow we have to expand and I knew with a number of offices in Florida, the only way for me to grow was to make a move. I didn’t love a lot of choices on the list they came up with, but one state stood out to me – North Carolina. I have no friends or family there, but it just spoke to me. I got on Google and started researching the most populated areas in the state and it mentioned the city of Charlotte. Charlotte is exploding right now, and the words associated with that city kept popping up, like start-up business, entrepreneur, and more. It seemed like these could be great people to attract to the team. I individually texted two people on my team about making a move from Orlando to Charlotte and they both got back to me with the same exact response, ‘if you want me, I’ll be there tomorrow.’”

Yet while all this was being discussed, Kaley was involved in a personal challenge, a goal she set for herself just a few months before and one which was taking up much of her focus at the moment – the goal of producing one-million-dollars in personal production for the year. The goal would make it a three-repeat for her and would qualify her again for the prestigious Council of Excellence Award. The challenge was that as of October 2019, less than three months to go before the end of the year, she was way behind.

“Back in October of last year I was super behind in my sales numbers,” says Kaley.” I was at about $500,000 in issued sales, but the leader’s meeting got me pumped up to finish strong. On the bus ride to one of our group outings, I sat next to Travis Yoder, our Executive VP of Sales, and we talked about still hitting the one-million-dollar mark for the year. He said if you make it I will personally fly down and congratulate you. I got to work and I did as much production in seven weeks as I’d done all year and I hit the goal! Travis honored his end of the deal and flew down to visit our office. It was really cool and he also gave me permission to become a Satellite Division Leader – and make the move to Charlotte.”

By February Kaley and her team had packed their bags and moved from Florida to North Carolina, with people like Matt and Kayla Galecki, Marina David, Javer Perez, and Collin Lewis-Solomon. The core crew was all ready to kick it off big in a brand new city. But someone unexpected and unwelcome also made the trip.

Her name was Corona.

“Here we are in this new city, ready to get it going in a big way,” says Kaley, “and we even had a beautiful office in mind, then the virus hit. It was a huge setback, everything was delayed, everything came to a stop. We just moved to this city, and now this – but we could look at it either as something we can’t overcome, or find the good things in what was happening, and that’s what we did. We said, ok this gives us time to reset, what do we want this culture to be, what kind of plan do we come up with, how do we get a new agent through the funnel and get them on the path to success even quicker than we did?  The philosophy worked – because it gave us the time to bond – to build our foundation of integrity and honesty. We made an agreement with each other that if there was an issue with any of us or any of our agents, that we deal with it directly, no going behind someone’s back, we’d confront the challenges head-on.”

The spread of the COVID-19 crisis is a defining moment in all of our lives, but it also served as a defining moment in the birth of the Kallman Satellite as well, because it brought about a fundamental focus for the team, as the leaders looked to form a singular purpose.

“The most impactful meeting we had was the one where we tried to decide what would be the one thing we could focus on that would make the biggest improvement moving forward. We knew we needed really good training, we wanted to build a great culture, we had to define our why. But we went back and forth and finally narrowed it down – that one thing was new agent conversion. Because all the things we were listing out really led to one thing – if we can get the new agent to see the vision and transition into our company and its culture, then we would be truly successful. We had our one thing and we felt really great about it.”

The time and space that the virus opened up in terms of strategy and planning also led to another gift… a brand new location, better than the one which Kaley had initially planned on using for her new Satellite.

“Because of Coronavirus a different office space opened up,” says Kaley. “And this blew the old space out of the water! It’s huge, four-thousand square feet, a lot of light and it worked perfectly. It’s funny how when adversity strikes, the way you think about it is what matters. If you focus on the positives it works out, if you focus on the negatives, then that’s also how it goes.”

There’s no doubt it was mindset that made it happen for Kaley when she went after the challenge of writing $500,000 in business to hit her $1 million goal – and making it happen with a little more than two months to go at the end of 2019. She faced a ton of challenges and adversity. And you don’t hit those numbers without a little help from your friends, or even a close relative. Out of that challenge came a new purpose for someone very close to Kaley, her mom.

“After I made that deal with Travis back in October, I said I’m gonna need some help and my mom was one of the first people I asked. I said, ‘mom you have nothing going on right now why don’t you help me set appointments?’ “I started teaching her how to work the dialer and to set up meetings and I realized she was really good at it. I could not have hit that goal without her. She booked me so tight most days with back-to-back appointments, I barely had time to pee in between!” laughs Kaley.

“Once open enrollment was over my mom wondered how much she could earn if she ended up getting her license and working for USHA herself! After I moved to North Carolina, my mom got her license and started writing business on her own. She blew through the milestone of issuing $100,000 in annual volume in her first thirteen weeks, in fact, she did it with three weeks to spare. The week after she hit the $100,000 goal she put up $83,000 in a single week! Recently, because of the Coronavirus, she’s been working from home, but she’s still doing great.”

Whether the new agent is her own mother, or someone else – Kaley says the team has a good system in place to get new people in the flow and on the road to success at USHEALTH Advisors.

“Once they are licensed we have the new agent come in for orientation and attend our Friday meeting in person. We sit down and lay out their goals for the next three years, where they are now and then talk about the action steps to achieve those. We don’t want to be babysitters, but instead to hold them accountable. If your goal is to earn $100,000 in your first year, this opportunity makes it possible, but in no way will it be easy… here is what it’s going to take.  We want them to ask questions, and to be our shadow. Once they can pitch to us, then they can pitch to the general public. Then it’s time to reach out to everyone they know who might need help.”

Kaley says after the training is over that’s really when the role of a leader begins because she knows there will be highs and lows.

“The goal is to be there for them when it gets challenging,” she says. “Sales is a rollercoaster, one minute you’re on top of the world and the next minute it all falls apart and it can be an emotional whirlwind. You celebrate your successes and know that the next low might be right around the corner, so if it comes, you know to keep on going.”

It’s been a true journey the past four-and-a-half years and Kaley says she wouldn’t trade it for the world. No one who lives for the challenge that life presents ever wants to trade it in, or to ever back down.

“My greatest achievement is where we are right now because I can see where it’s leading. This is what I’ve wanted to for so long and here we are at the doorstep. It is having our own office and building our culture and allowing our vision of what we believe this opportunity is and can be, to come to light the way we see it. I’m so humbled and feel so fortunate to have these people here, my team. We have three more coming from Orlando to join us and we’ve built such a tight-knit group. I’m really humbled that people would pick up their bags and move to a new state. To have the team trust me this much and sacrifice this much to fulfill the vision is amazing.”

“The thing I want the most is to help people to change their lives. They were at a certain point when they met me and they were able to turn their lives around and it is my and my team’s responsibility to help these people to achieve their own dreams. I want people to redefine their purpose and I want to help them every step of the way and then have them pay it forward to the next person who comes along. Many people who come here are missing something big in their lives, they are missing a purpose and this opportunity gives them a purpose. Success without purpose is not much of a life at all. But success with purpose changes people’s lives.”

Success, purpose, and a new life. Kaley Kallman is a living embodiment of the heart of USHEALTH Advisors.

HOPE lives.

Until next time, thanks for taking the time.

Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky