Episode 108 | From Real Estate to Hollywood: Turning Passion into Purpose - Danielle Kennedy Part 1

In this episode of Uncopyable Women in Business, I sit down with the extraordinary Danielle Kennedy—a top realtor, international speaker, actor, and mother of five.

We dive into her inspiring journey from dominating the real estate world to captivating audiences on stage and screen. Danielle reveals how storytelling, resilience, and empathy have been her keys to success, along with powerful lessons on gratitude and pursuing your passions at any age.

About Danielle:
Danielle Kennedy is an accomplished actor and international speaker, celebrated as a Hall of Fame inductee by the National Speakers Association. A mother of five who later blended families "Brady Bunch style," Danielle launched her career in real estate out of necessity, quickly rising to become a top realtor. Her success paved the way for a thriving career in public speaking, inspiring audiences worldwide.

With her children grown, Danielle followed her lifelong passion for acting, earning over 50 TV and movie credits. At 79, she continues to break boundaries, proving it’s never too late to pursue your dreams.

Learn More: IMDb
Contact Danielle LinkedIn

Kay Miller interviews women in sales with proven track records, as they share their experiences, success strategies and tools you can use to crush your sales goals. Kay has a history of sales success, earning the nickname “Muffler Mama” when she sold more automotive mufflers than anyone in the world. Kay and her guests deliver actionable insights and real-world tools that will help you overcome obstacles, adopt a winning mindset, and maximize your sales results.

Kay is the author of the book, Uncopyable Sales Secrets – How to Create an Unfair Advantage and Outsell the Competition. Go to Amazon.com and search “Uncopyable Sales Secrets” to order the book, or click the link below.

Contact:
kay@uncopyablesales.com
linkedin.com/in/millerkay
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Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:00  Welcome to UN Copyable Women in Business. I'm your host, Kay Miller. Also known as Muffler Mama. Stay tuned as I, along with my guests, give you marketing, sales, and personal branding strategies that will give you an unacceptable advantage. Today I'm talking with Danielle Kennedy. Danielle is an actor and an international speaker who's been inducted into the very elite Hall of Fame by the National Speakers Association. Now, as the mom of five kids, Danielle started a career in real estate by necessity after she became a top realtor. She started a successful speaking career and then once her kids were raised and by then she'd added three more. She gave birth to one. The others were Brady Bunch style, as she puts it. She said she even got a letter from the Pope. That totally cracks me up. Danielle pursued her lifelong passion for acting in theater and now has over 50 TV and movie roles to her credit. Now at the age of 79, and she just before informed me that in three weeks she'll be 80.
Speaker 1 00:01:07  She's not done. She appears in the TV series man on the inside, starring Ted Danson. Danielle, welcome to the podcast. it's so good to see you, Kay Miller. Oh, my gosh, it's so good to see you, too. We go way back. Yeah, we go way back. We met years ago at the National Speakers Association, and at the time Steve was very involved. My husband, Steve, the orange dude. And, just fell in love with you, of course, right from the beginning. And, you are phenomenal in front of the camera, no matter whether it's a movie or speech. So I'm honored to have you. You're so sweet. I, I was an only child and always wanted a big family, obviously, as you so beautifully introduced me as the mother of. But being an only child I think had a lot to do with my desire for acting, because I had I had imaginary friends from the time I was little. I'd have tea parties when I was four with little tea cups, and I was always talking to myself.
Speaker 1 00:02:19  And I'll tell you, actors do have to talk to themselves a lot, especially when they're creating a role and backstory that makes sense. Imagination. So I'm lucky because I've always gotten to do what I love. What I really always wanted to do from the beginning, of course, was be an actor, but I think probably the most, most important thing I ever wanted to do was have a family. And once I had that family, I pursued something that obviously monetarily would make sense because I had the sound of the Sound of Music kind of idea of what raising a family was like, and I didn't take finances into consideration. All it costs eight children or five children or six. So I'm glad I put the acting dream on the back burner until after they were all raised. I really am, because it's brutal. A lot of rejection and we'll talk about all of that. But if you are freer as far as motherhood being at another stage when you do pursue it, older woman type like I, I was, it's easier.
Speaker 1 00:03:35  I wouldn't have wanted that kind of pressure on me when I had all those little kids that would have taken away from the enjoyment I had as a mother. You were 27 and you had five kids, right? Yes, yes. I never really intended, to work because back in the 60s, women, if they want to go to college, they graduated from college and often they would get married the day after their graduation. That was common back then. And so I did get married. And like a good Catholic girl who wanted to have a lot of babies, I had five babies in seven years and a husband at that time, my ex-husband, who has since passed away. He took a job traveling, and then after about 6 or 7 years, he really got tired of that traveling. We were transferred out here from Chicago to California, and he got into a bank training program. And I was then six months pregnant with the fifth one. And we had a real financial crisis because he went on a bank training type salary and had a big crash in income.
Speaker 1 00:04:43  So I had to go to work. And I chose real estate because you could do it freelance type. In other words, I didn't want a 9 to 5 job. I really did, I? And I do remember you talking about it wasn't quite what you pictured. You thought, oh, this is going to be easy. Oh, yeah. And very flexible. It was an eye opener, but you still became so successful. I door knocked back in the day. We used to Dornoch and I adore knocked six months pregnant. I would take the other kids along in a stroller and you'd go up to the door and I'd say, hi, I'm Daniel Kennedy from Mission Vale Realty, and if you ever think about moving, I hope you'll maybe think about me. And it was a very simple I didn't say, hey, I've got a buyer for your house. It got a lot of people got very technically. And that wasn't my style. My style was. I'm also in the neighborhood, I love homes.
Speaker 1 00:05:39  I would do a great job for you. And that's how it started. Door to door. And the next thing, within the next five years, I was selling 100 resale homes a year. And that's phenomenal. Yeah, and there were 30 and $40,000 houses, and the commissions weren't hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it really helped us out. But it was also I look back and I think, how did I do that? Because raising the family and holding the long telephone with the cord and the kitchen and stirring the spaghetti and changing the diaper and oh yes, I have a showing. I'll bring someone to your house at 2:00 this afternoon, not getting a lot of sleep. You have a tremendous work ethic, obviously, but you always are so positive, really genuinely positive. And for you listening, she's the real deal. So I can see why people were attracted to that. And I'm not sure how you transitioned into speaking. Well, you are, and we're okay. Go ahead. You mean that great question, because how did I transition to speaking that desire that I grew up with when I was in grade school, and high school and college.
Speaker 1 00:06:53  Went two years in college before I dropped out, got married, and then went back later in my 50s and got my degrees. But that desire to be an actor was always there because I was in the plays in grade school. In high school, I went to an all girl Catholic high school. We did King and I and The Crucible, and I auditioned and I did all the plays, and when I got to college the same way, but it was always there. And as time went on and I sold more and more houses, I had a desire to at least speak about it because I was an oddity back then. People don't realize it, but when I got into real estate, it was a highly male dominated field. A woman going on caravan, six months pregnant. They'd all meet in a like a restaurant, and then everybody go out and look at houses together. They were all men and they were like, why don't you go home and have your baby? You talk about, oh, wow, I don't even want to go there.
Speaker 1 00:07:58  So that was a big deal. A woman in that particular era, her in the in, in the job market and in the real estate market was like a social experiment. It really was as time went on, because I always loved to write to, I said, you know what? I'm gonna write a book about how I sell houses, how I communicate, because there were all these very technical things going on which I didn't really practice any of that. And so I wrote a book about how to list and sell real estate that was very appealing to a lot of people who are all about just making a connection and word of mouth and doing a good job, and then that client telling another client It was really much more, what's the word? I'm looking for this. I don't know, the relationship. Relationship selling and I have I wanted to point out one thing that you mentioned as I was researching you for this interview, you had a ton of referrals because you believe in service, genuine taking care of genuinely taking care of the customer.
Speaker 1 00:09:16  And you said that when you got a referral and you would approach someone, you said, now I have a double responsibility because I want to make that person who referred me to you. I want to make them look really good. So I think that's just a really good peek into your attitude. You really done your homework, Camille, because the double responsibility script is one of the most popular scripts that I wrote in the Hotlist and Sell book. I had tons of stuff like that, but that one was a winner and people loved it and they were like, wow. And I would carry through to I'd have the people call them. And then it was a very strategic carrying out an accountability type of a relationship. And yeah, that is how I built my business. Really. The double responsibility script was huge. So how did I get into speaking? So I wrote this book and it turned out to be huge, like 500 pages. And I got it self-published. And then I was lucky enough down the road to get it, published by a real publisher.
Speaker 1 00:10:28  Prentice Hall, and other people took it up as time went on, and when it got sold, it sold over a million copies. It's still in print. And I forgot to add that to your intro. There's too much about you, Danielle. I actually wrote seven books and broadened into the general speaking world. I did a book called supernatural, selling seven figure selling. The balancing act between career and family got into all kinds of stuff like that in my writing. But one of the reasons I wrote that book was I wanted to start teaching. I wanted to start speaking, and I knew that it would give me credibility if I had a book. And the first place I went was the California Association of Realtors. They had big conventions, and I auditioned. I had to audition with about a five minute speech. My book was in print by then, and I started getting hired to do breakout sessions on how to list, how to sell, how to build a referral business. And that was great because all that acting stuff, all that juice was in there, and I used a lot of storytelling.
Speaker 1 00:11:44  Telling me to type stuff so women and men in the audience would go, oh, wow. Yeah, I felt that way too. Wow. When I lost that listing, it took me three days to get over it. I was really sad. I was in grief and people were connecting on a very personal level, and I used humor and everything I knew about my acting world from high school and from my wonderful sister Xavier, who was my acting coach in college. I applied in my speeches and they weren't memorized. They were definitely laid out. But how I would lay out a speeches, I'd say, okay, introduction in the audience, pretend you're coming out of you're just a regular person in the audience coming out and stepping forward. Kitchen story about stirring spaghetti and listing ten houses. And I would plot it out story and then how to story, how to because I knew that it's very boring to do a 90 minute or an all day speech, which is nothing but people's stories. No, the story has to have a point.
Speaker 1 00:12:56  And so a story is connected to a how to. And it's got to be not just my story, but a story that could have happened to anybody in that audience. When you think about a great movie that you love or a great book, you see yourself in there. Oh yeah. G Reese Witherspoon did a great job as June in the Johnny Cash story. But what she went through in her relationship and her heartache and her pain, I've been down that road. And that's always the goal for an actor, a sales person. I know how she feels. She makes me feel. And then that connection happens. That's a great point. You need a story and you need a point, because we don't want to just listen to the how to's like it's a textbook. And as you point out, the story is what is memorable and what makes the audience member or the person who is the buyer makes the buyer feel connected. And yes, I feel that way too. So you really are brilliant at doing that.
Speaker 1 00:14:06  I've watched a lot of your speeches, and I like the fact that you say you've got a framework, but you don't memorize, because I think that is so apparent when you are speaking from a script, which of course you do in the movies and the shows, but that's another story we'll talk about. Right? That's keeping that eight year old brain sharp. But, it's pretty darn sharp. And boy, in the next episode we'll talk more about that and you've got to check out her her cred, the list of roles that you've played. But that is just great advice for salespeople. Like you said, combining what? And maybe it's a product or service that you want to show the benefits of. But the story is what grabs people. And here's a little side note, which you I don't think I've shared with you. Another one of my jobs is I am a Kaiser contractor, Kaiser Hospital. Kaiser health has a cadre of professional actors. There's 30 of us, and we go around and work with doctors year round on patient empathy, improving their patient communication skills based on intention, attention, acknowledgement and appreciation.
Speaker 1 00:15:25  And I just did I did one of these programs yesterday where say, a patient has to wait in a waiting room for an hour, and by the time they get in with the doctor, they're furious. So I'll play an angry patient, or I'll play a patient who is sad because maybe she's just had a cancer diagnosis. And these doctors, they've got to get away from looking at their computers. When the patient comes in and making that connection, they have to make that same connection. And sometimes they do it by telling a quick story. Say I come in and I'm having back pain. Maybe the doctor says I'm dealing a little bit now with something like that with my own mother. And here I really highly recommend this physical therapy. And so when they make themselves human, as opposed to just the medical expert, the trust builds between the patient and the doctor. So I'm back to doing a lot of what I did, in the sales world now in medicine. And I do that in between booking film and television.
Speaker 1 00:16:32  So, yeah. What do you do in your spare time? Have any. But that is that's a great point because as a patient it makes such a difference. I used to call it bedside manner. Right. Some doctors, you can tell they really care and they're they want to know about you. And some are just okay, here's the diagnosis. Here's the prescription. Be on your way. So many of these skills that you're talking about apply to sales of course, and business owners, so many women are starting businesses and even at older ages and all the different definition of old, the definition of all that I've heard is ten years older than however old you are. And I told you, I've been interviewing women who are 35 and 45 and they say, oh, I'm so much older now, and I'm really seeing the changes. And your babies, ladies, your babies, your babies. And I'm 65. I'm like, I'm a toddler. Yeah, but that's the new. That's the 65 is the new 55? Yes.
Speaker 1 00:17:39  And I feel great. Thinking about retiring and especially. You're a great role model for that, because why would you ever want to retire from something that you love? No. I hope that my health stays and strong so that I can work until your last breath. Seriously? Yeah. And one thing I heard you talk about in one of your programs is how much you believe in health, physical health activity, for all kinds of reasons. But I think that is a common theme that I hear from other really successful businesspeople and speakers. Most of them do exercise and take care of their health, because it gives you an energy that you can't get if you don't do that. And if you do it from the time you're young. And I got good habits in that area because I was a competitive figure skater as a young woman, as a kid and a young woman, and took dance lessons and all that, and then all the way into the age I am now. I've always exercised. My husband and I and all the kids.
Speaker 1 00:18:40  We were real big aerobics people when the aerobics, like the Jane Fonda era and the Jazzercise, we all would go to class together. Sometimes I would do two two hour classes a day in the morning and night. Oh, and taught aerobics at NSA National speakers, taught it at those conventions and always did it. Now I mostly walk. I'll walk 4 or 5 miles a day. Walking is everything. Everything. You can do it anywhere. You don't need equipment. And if you saw me, if you're watching this and you saw me roll my eyes a little when you said you were a figure skater, it's because I'm like, what has this woman not done? I'm not doing that much anymore. I know, but you have always had this zest for life, this positivity. When you talk about when you're selling or when you're teaching, It's about the audience. You have this empathy. Naturally. You're just really you're you are something special, Daniel, in a big way that you're going to blow up for the I know, I know, you're such a sweetheart.
Speaker 1 00:19:47  That's good, because you said you've just landed another movie role, and I didn't talk about it until the next episode, but we'll do. But I love these messages for the listener. Basic empathy stories, taking care of yourself, being healthy. And if you don't have energy and you don't feel good, it's hard to. See, health is got to be number one. And tied in with that is sleep. People don't realize how much sleep is as important as exercise. I mean, if you're not getting enough sleep, oh that's bad. And you I think you made a comment about a lot of overweight people look at skinny people and say, what are they doing? One of them is sleep. I do know some of those hormones and things that are produced when you sleep that help you manage your weight and your appetite. But just like you said, I used to tell my daughter all the time, our daughter that you know very well. I would always say, your body heals when you sleep.
Speaker 1 00:20:53  Absolutely, absolutely. Okay. One of the other things a big message for our listeners, which is wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. It's the whole idea of being resilient. The idea of bouncing back after failure. And that was pretty much a theme in my. I'm like a cat who's had nine lives right in my other lives as a real estate agent, then a real estate teacher, then a real estate speaker, and then a general sales general keynote speaker. That whole era Also all the writing, because when you're submitting books and you're going through the rejection with editors and so forth, and then of course, when you get into acting, I thought I understood and knew rejection until I became an actor. And wow, that is that's got to smack you around. But you really have to be able to delete, delete, delete as soon as. Okay, I didn't get that sale. I didn't get that prospect. They went another direction. As Mark Victor Hanson said, he's one of the creators of the Chicken Soup series.
Speaker 1 00:22:07  And he says next. Next is. That's my word too. Yeah. And I have an interesting story that I heard you tell, and you might be surprised that I caught on to this, but this, I think, is also in your genes because your grandfather, who was named Daniel and you are named after him, he Got a horrible accident. He was working. I can't remember what you said. His job was something to do with power. What was his job? Work for the streetcar company in Chicago. Gosh, you are good, Kay Miller. I'm good, I'm good. See, Stan wants to hire you to help me. I'm already know. I need to hire you to help me. This old lady were perspiring. Okay, so his hands were perspiring. So when he flipped a switch, he got electrocuted. Yeah, with more volts of electricity than they give a man in the chair. Okay, so right there. Yeah. His body was burned. He lived three years after that, and.
Speaker 1 00:23:10  But his brain and he still had a beautiful singing voice, all that he was communicating. And he actually died the morning of my baptism. Yeah. That's that gives me goosebumps. And but another little detail of that story is that for three years he was in the hospital and the nurses said he was partially paralyzed and he was blind, and he would sit up in bed and sing an Irish lullaby that I think we've probably all heard too. Real. Laura. Laura, I can sing it, but I'm going to spare you. But absolutely. And he had this poem and he always recited it. Smile. And the world smiles with you weep. Then you weep alone. For the cheerful grin will get you in. Where the kicker is never known. You're getting to me on that one. I don't think I've said that poem for many years, and it's good that I say that now. And remember that, you know, it's. Thank you. Oh. You're welcome. I just I loved that story and the fact that you again, are named after him.
Speaker 1 00:24:20  And he died on the day of your baptism, that you said you always felt connected to him. And what a wonderful person to be connected with. And yes, these are Guardian angel and we have a saying in the UN copyable philosophy, which if you're watching, you can see all our orange books behind us. I saw this orange. It's gray. That's it. Yes. And it is being brilliant at the basics. And some of these things that you're talking about really aren't rocket science. No, but they can make or break your success. I think, too, this is a story that that always really helped me. And at the age we're at now, we're seeing a lot of our friends have health issues, not necessarily just our older friends, but there's just a lot going on in the world, and there's a lot of anger. And with social media and all the divisiveness and everything that that we've seen in the last 20 years or so. I think that I often try to go back to what am I grateful for today? Focusing.
Speaker 1 00:25:35  Even when I walk, I'll say, okay, what are the ten things that come to my mind this morning that I'm most grateful for? And I used to listen to Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. He was a Catholic bishop that had a lot of books, and he had a TV show in the 1950s called Life Is Worth Living, with a huge viewership like millions. When TV's first came out and I heard him speak once in Anaheim, California, and he talked about the Greek word scallop, scallop. And what that means in English is your burden, your cross, your weight. And he said he looked out at the audience and he said, if I were to ask ten of you to come up here now and lay down in front of all of us your scallops, the burden, the hardship is suffering. Whatever it is, lay it all out. And then all ten of you stand back and you could see not only your scallop that you placed in front of you, but the other nine.
Speaker 1 00:26:49  If I were to say, now, choose the one you want to carry. You'd go back to your own. You wouldn't want to trade. That's like marriage. It's like you look around. Who else is marriage? What you want? Okay. I want my own man. No, I'm Abbie. I'll take exactly what I have here. That is going to be another common theme with really successful women that I've talked to. And I think that a lot of us say, oh, yeah, we're grateful. When you really think of the grand scheme of things. We hit the lottery, being married, being born in the US. We're lucky. We are blessed. But to really go through and make that a conscious exercise, I don't think many people do that. And I have to say I'm guilty of it too. I have a little five minute gratitude app, and how many days do I say, oh, I don't have time for that. I don't have time to list three things I'm grateful for.
Speaker 1 00:27:44  Of course I do. And that just changes your mindset, right? It it does, it does because I we can all get Debbie Downer. We can all be oh poor me. Hey I'm half Irish, half Italian. Both grandparents on both sides were immigrants came into this country. So I've got I love that I have those genes in me. But it's passion. That's anger, that's joy. I can roller coaster just like anybody else. And and really one of the great things about exercise is you get those endorphins and you get all levels you off. I think it's great for that to let me steam off so I can. I'm like anybody else. I can get down and feel sorry for myself. And then I'm like, wait a minute here. Let's just go over right now what so-and-so going through. Oh no, they just had a diagnosis or what? Oh, what's this person? They've just lost their house. And then you start thinking, wow, they think about them and what they're going through.
Speaker 1 00:28:49  And it makes me realize that this thing I'm concentrating on, this little tiny pimple or whatever in my nature right now, or whatever's nagging at me or who's irritating me is really inconsequential. Yeah, really is small. But that's something you have to deal with when you're dealing with failure to and resiliency. You have to think, well, maybe somebody else got that job or that part or that contract, whatever you want to call.
Speaker 2 00:29:21  It.
Speaker 1 00:29:22  For a reason that you don't really know, that has a lot more value in the big picture than it would if you had gotten it, and maybe if they had gotten it. Sometimes people say, be careful what you wish for, because how many times have we really been disappointed or felt awful about something? And then we look back ten years later and go, oh, did I dodged a bullet? Danielle, we're going to close out this part of the interview, and I can't thank you enough for these not only great stories, wisdom, specific things that each of us can do to be not only more successful, but happier in life.
Speaker 1 00:30:03  And so thank you so much, Danielle. My pleasure. Thank you. Kay, thanks for listening to this episode.
Speaker 3 00:30:12  The next time and always remember to be an copyable.