“Teachers can make such a profound impact on our lives and should be honored as heroes.”
When she was little, Kaitlynn Rivadeneira had a dream, a dream to show the way to others.
“If I’m going to be honest, I always wanted to be a teacher,” says Kaitlynn. “I just knew that’s what I was supposed to do. So I was on that fast track for life. When I was in high school, I took the early childhood classes where your actual class is to teach the preschoolers, and then in college I was taking anywhere between 18 to 21 credit hours, working and going to school in the summer. I was a crazy person, doing it all, but I was always in education. And then as soon as I graduated, I went right into teaching when I was 20 and I was the youngest teacher in my school for four years. Unfortunately, teachers are not appreciated. And it’s crazy because fundamentally, we would be nowhere without them.”
Kaitlynn speaks the truth: There’s nothing more important than a well-educated mind, and teachers are irreplaceable in our lives. Once she joined USHEALTH Advisors, Kaitlynn wanted to become an irreplaceable force and started producing at a very high level. She’s issued nearly $3.2 million in annual volume in less than two years with the company, and she was quickly respected as someone who could teach others and was asked to step into leadership.
“When I was a writing agent or career agent, I wasn’t helping out to get into a different position, like a field training agent, it’s just my personality type,” says Kaitlynn. “I’m a teacher, so if there’s a room full of struggling people, I can’t just sit there and watch them struggle. I always tell my team it’s not fun when one person is winning and everybody else is struggling. So with that being said, all of last year I was just helping the people around me and my goal was not to be an FTA. When I was a lead teacher, I didn’t want to be a lead teacher. I just wanted to do a good job and that’s it. But naturally, the way the year went, I got promoted, but I wasn’t doing it for that. I just wanted the people next to me to be able to pay their bills and build their residual income. But it did end up going in my favor because obviously all the people that I helped last year chose me as their leader and they’re very, very supportive and very loyal.”
It’s a bonus to Kaitlynn’s team to have someone who cares deeply about other people’s success and has their back. And as a former teacher, Kaitlynn also has expectations and principles she lives by and expects others to do the same.
Kaitlynn is all in to win.
“I go a hundred percent into everything,” says Kaitlynn. “So, I graduated college in under three years. I got my master’s degree in under a year. I came here to USHA and did everything I had to, because for me, failure is not an option. So there’s never been a time where I’m not hitting my goals because I won’t allow myself to do that, if that makes sense. I know it sounds strange in some ways, but I guess my struggles have been that I’ve had to really sacrifice a lot of my family time and time with my friends in order to hit all my milestones and achievements. That has been a struggle because a lot of people who don’t run like this or don’t work in sales, they don’t understand that. But for the bigger picture I had to sacrifice a lot of things like that.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but if you get it, you get it. And if you don’t, you don’t. I’ll do anything because, and I always tell this to my team too, it’s like if I fail if I don’t hit my goals, I need to know that regardless, I did everything possible. And then I would be okay with that. I would not be okay with not hitting my goals, knowing I could have done better.”
It might be that New Jersey mindset: go get what you want and don’t take no for an answer. Kaitlynn began her life in Jersey, moving to Florida when she was 8. Two of Kaitlynn’s family members have followed in her footsteps and joined USHA. “Part of the reason that I work here is to help them be more successful, but they’re very different from me,” says Kaitlynn.
And Kaitlynn, too, feels like she’s always been different.
“I left my parent’s house when I was 17,” she says. So I went to college, and I just never wanted to look back. I was kind of just doing everything on my own. I wanted to leave and be independent. Not because I was running away, but because I wanted to be independent in the sense that my family no longer had to take care of me; I could be responsible and take care of myself.”
“I didn’t leave home because of family issues or anything like that. I have a really strong head on my shoulders. I craved independence. I always have; I always dreamt of going to Florida State University and I really wanted that for myself. That was another reason I graduated so fast because I didn’t want to be a burden at all to my parents. So the faster I finished college, then I could jumpstart life. It was to show what I could do.”
“A little background, my parents are both immigrants, they both immigrated from Ecuador. They were very young when they immigrated separately, and then met in college. My dad is an entrepreneur and he always wanted his kids to come into the business with him. He’s had several businesses and we never had a desire to that, but he always had really, really high expectations for us. I mean really high expectations, like, if I got a 98 on a test he would say, “Why not a 100″? He demanded excellence. And so I feel like I’ve always had to rise to those occasions, which is part of the reason why I have done things in a really fast way and I feel like that kind of attributes to some things in my life.”
We’re all pieces of those who have helped form us… chiseled us into the people we are now. Kaitlynn is no different, using her dad’s drive and expectations to inspire her actions, carrying her all the way from teaching from her heart to helping and serving at USHEALTH Advisors. But to transition from one career, Kaitlynn had to accept going from being a teacher to being a student again.
No surprise, Kaitlynn was up for the challenge.
“If I’m going to be honest, I didn’t have a backup plan when I quit teaching. I gave myself three months off. I quit in July of 2022, and I told myself if I don’t have a job by November, then I’ll go be a server for a couple of months until I figure it out. I had some emergency funds, but I told myself, if I was going to do this opportunity, then obviously I’m going to go all in and I’m going at a hundred percent – full force in.”
By September, Kaitlynn had decided to join USHEALTH Advisors.
Kaitlynn also did the one thing you MUST do to succeed at anything new. It’s mentioned time and time again, in story after story, about the most successful people in this company. Such people can stare adversity in the face, take the hits, build a thick skin, and, most importantly, want to put someone in a better place than they found them. Those exceptional individuals embrace the suck.
“I didn’t make any money for my first two weeks here, maybe a hundred dollars or something like that,” says Kaitlynn. “But I wasn’t going to let that stop me, or excuse me from working or anything like that. So I looked around and saw that everybody else is around me is making money. And so I told myself if I don’t make money next week, then I’m going to change something because obviously this can’t continue. And the following week wasn’t much better. So by the third week I invested in myself and everything skyrocketed after that.”
Kaitlynn invested not only a small amount of money in herself, leads, etc., but she also invested in learning and improving, as any good student would do.
“I was a sponge,” says Kaitlynn. “I listened to every single person around me. I know it sounds corny, if you talk to successful people, they all say the same thing. They were just sponges. I listened to everyone around me every single time I got on a call, and the person hung up or the call didn’t go the way that I wanted it to go, I would immediately just turn to my left or right and tell the other agent or leader, “Look, they said this, what should I have said instead?” And then I would use their advice on the next call. I was married to the office. I was here all day, every day, super long hours. I was here from eight in the morning to 11 o’clock at night. I would go to the gym at 5:00 AM, that way I wouldn’t have to leave during the day and I just never stopped dialing. So that’s kind of the running joke at the office is that I could be having a conversation with someone in my office and while they’re distracted or off task or whatever, I’d still be dialing and while I’m in mid-conversation with that person, all of a sudden, a potential client would pick up and I’d be like, “Hi, this is Kaitlynn, how are you? And just get back to business. So I never stopped. I never stopped.”
Kaitlynn says she also taught herself how to make what she refers to as, “laptop money.”
“I’ve learned how to take this business anywhere,” says Kaitlynn. “The laptop and the virtual part allows me to still travel and help people. I close business in almost every airport I am in and I’m always pitching and closing at the hair salon. I even close business while getting my lashes done and my eyes closed,” she laughs. “This job can really take you anywhere.”
As much as Kaitlynn loves her new career at USHEALTH Advisors, she never forgets her roots, which gave her the skills to learn, study, and teach – raising the lives of those in her care. She says it was a challenging decision to leave teaching behind.
“If I’m going to be honest, my biggest accomplishment is teaching,” says Kaitlynn. “Actually, it’s bigger than that. My biggest accomplishment is teaching six-year-olds who don’t know how to read and then teaching them to read fluently in 10 months. I did that for a lot of six-year-olds when I taught first grade.”
“It was a really hard decision to leave teaching” says Kaitlynn. “I didn’t leave to come to USHA. The reason I left teaching is because of the system. It’s very broken and at the level I worked, there was no more room to grow. So the harder I worked, I wasn’t getting paid more, I wasn’t compensated more. And that’s not a fault of the school, but that’s just the way it works. I had already done all the things in order to grow. I had already gotten my master’s degree. I was a team leader. I was working in a title one school. I was working at a PYP international school. I was already doing all those things. I was working extra hours, but unfortunately that’s it. Unless I wanted to go into administration, which I didn’t, there was no more room to grow. And that was it for me, I can’t be stifled.”
Now, as a Field Training Agent at USHEALTH Advisors and, in only her first two years here, one of the most successful agents in the company, Kaitlynn can teach again—to those on her team who rely on her to instruct, inspire, and care.
“I run trainings. I provide people with a calendar that they didn’t have before last year so they know what to expect on a daily or monthly basis because I’m very big on structure,” says Kaitlynn. “So if we have a training or a meeting and you say you didn’t know about it, you can’t say that. I’m not going to listen to your excuses. It was on the calendar, you should have been there or you should have communicated to me why you can’t. Things like that. I do a lot of one-on-ones with agents. It’s very much catered to where each agent is at that time because obviously different agents, they’re at different points in what they’re struggling with, or how they need help. So it’s just depends on what the agent needs.”
“I tell them you get what you put in and it’s a hundred percent accurate. You can physically be here, but if you’re not mentally here, you’re not going to get it. You’re not going to get what you want out of it. So really putting your all into it and just seeing what this opportunity can do for you. Give it three months of full effort, without wavering. Be here, follow the system. Be a sponge, take everything in.”
While Kaitlynn believes anyone who does what she says can make it, she has a unique, soft spot in her heart for the ladies on her team.
“I run a team of primarily females, and the females are some of the top producers,” says Kaitlynn. “And they’ll have excuses just like everyone else about why this won’t work or why they can’t make it happen. Everybody has an excuse, right? But I tell them, “If I can do it, so can you.” I always say, we always say, “I’m just a girl. I’m just a girl.” We kind of use that to motivate us. And it’s true. I’m just a girl who used to be a teacher who wanted more for herself. And if you want more for yourself and you believe in yourself, then this is for you, right? I always say there’s nobody there out there that believes in me more than I believe in myself. And if you feel the same way and you believe in your capabilities, then you can do this too. I’m just a girl.”
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky
