How Kathleen Black turns adversity into alchemy

One quiet morning more than fifteen years ago, Kathleen Black picked up her Starbucks cup and stopped mid-sip. The words on the cup read: “The most dangerous thing you can ever do is get rich doing something you don’t love.” She laughs: “I remember looking at the cup and thinking, ‘Oh no.’”

Black was a successful real estate agent on a team at the time; the kind of top-performing colleagues who asked for advice. But that one sentence forced her to pause. “I already started coaching, and I didn’t like sales because I thought it was a shorter relationship with people, and I could only go so deep.”

That coffee cup marked a turning point. What started as a small pivot, where I started working full-time in addition to mentoring, grew into a complete transformation. She left sales entirely for coaching, eventually launching what would become Kathleen Black International (KBI).

The coaching and training company, she says, is Canada’s best team coaching platform and the country’s best female-founded one-on-one coaching platform. KBI reports that its customer network has generated more than $30 billion in additional sales volume over the past decade, with 80 percent of customers among the top one percent of manufacturers.

Today, Black leads an ecosystem of coaches known for combining data-driven systems with a deeply human approach. But her success, she is quick to point out, was never about money. “I’m not financially motivated,” she says. “I want money to do the things I want, but I don’t care about money for money’s sake. The impact is what drives me.”

Black, who has a BA in psychology, has always been curious about people: “I’ve always been fascinated by communication and psychology – how people work, how they think,” she says. “As soon as I started selling, I naturally started writing scripts, improving systems and seeing what worked.” Her talent for pattern recognition and noticing what yielded consistent results immediately set her apart. For two years, Black straddled coaching and sales.

When she finally stepped away from trading to focus fully on coaching, the leap paid off. Black launched Kathleen Black Coaching & Consulting in 2015, now KBI (“We renamed it… so we can have more projects,” Black laughs). During that same period, she began creating what became the Ultimate Team Summit in 2016: North America’s largest team-specific event.

A holistic ecosystem

From the beginning, Black’s goal wasn’t simply to help real estate agents sell more homes. It was to help them build themselves as leaders. She takes a holistic approach: “I don’t just ask, ‘How is your business doing?’ … If you do things that you know are not true to yourself or not true to your integrity, then that will show up in business.” At the heart of that ecosystem is her philosophy of bringing together systems, psychology and self-awareness into a repeatable framework. “To me, a high-performing team is one that can achieve record numbers without sacrificing the people within it,” she says.

The first customers saw transformative results – from small teams doing a few dozen deals a year to thriving organizations closing hundreds. Recent case studies show that Jo-Anne Davies increased production by 30 percent in a tough market while posting her most profitable year, and Lisa Hartsink’s team achieved a 40 percent year-on-year increase in sales.

Black says her brain is “very much a systems-ecosystem mind.” But the core of her work does not consist of systems. It’s empathy. “I want to be a mentor because I didn’t have one… I didn’t have people who invested in me or helped me – either as a child or in business. People who didn’t have that are often drawn to me. They need a little support, and I get satisfaction from providing that.”

Lessons from the climb

Despite all the growth and recognition, Black’s path has not been linear. Scaling a coaching business has tested every part of her leadership and her resilience. “I’ve been through everything,” she says. “People trying to steal customers, working behind my back, stealing staff, all of that. Last year we even had cyber problems, but I’ve realized through other entrepreneurs that these things are part of the growth.” She adds, “As a leader, you sometimes feel ashamed: ‘Why is my team doing this? Did I do something wrong?'”

Recently, through therapy and energy work, she has come to understand why some setbacks hit so hard. “I learned that my personality wants to take responsibility for everything – that comes from interdependence. I thought that if I could solve everything with systems, I would always be safe. When I saw that clearly, it was liberating. Now when something goes wrong, I see it as something separate from me or the company.”

Those lessons became the basis for what Black now explains as alchemy leadership, the subject of her upcoming third book. The concept bridges the external and internal worlds of leadership. “The external world is everything that happens to us: interest rates, markets, rates, what people say or do. If we focus on that, I like the term antifragile.” On the internal side, “alchemy is the same ideation process of turning something difficult, like coal, into gold and something positive.” The book is structured around three phases: ‘birth, burning, becoming’. You can’t skip the burn, she says. That’s where the growth happens.

Spirituality is not a word often used in real estate coaching, but for Black it is integral. She is very spiritual – it comes up almost immediately in conversation. “To me, spirituality means that if I am faithful, honest, loving and serving, I have already won. What happens externally does not matter, because I have built inner strength.” Her pilgrimages make the metaphor literal.

She has walked the Camino de Santiago twice, hiked the Path of St. Francis in Italy and climbed both Kilimanjaro and Salkantay Pass in Peru. “I flew to Spain … only to realize that my only connection to the path is internal,” she says. That insight informs how she coaches: “If someone just wants me to talk business, I can talk business and impact their leadership. If someone wants me to say ‘woo,’ I can get straight to the point and impact their business.”

Partnership and presence

Black’s latest venture includes a new web series, FoundHers, a candid show she co-hosts with her wife Jane Thuet, a successful real estate agent. “We wanted to talk about what all our entrepreneur friends were talking about,” she says. “The hard stuff… growth, burnout, comparison… even perimenopause.” The show also reveals a new side of Black. “People kept giving us feedback that I was too robotic,” she admits. “Jane brings out my lighter side.” Their partnership extends beyond the screen. “She doesn’t compete with me, try to outdo or sabotage me, or demand to be the center of my life. She is successful in her own right – her business has grown tremendously – and she understands me,” says Black.

Of all her values, freedom remains the most personal to her. “For me, freedom means doing what I want, when I want, where I want – having the structure so that the company can run without me,” she says. That structure is not about escape; it’s about expansion. “It makes me climb new mountains – literally and figuratively,” she laughs. “Every time I go on a big trek, I come back with clarity for the next phase.”

The evolution of teams

As a systems strategist, Black has had a front-row seat to how team structures in the real estate industry have developed – and fallen apart – over the past decade. “Team building has become polarized,” she explains. “On the one hand you have powerful hubs… On the other hand, mega teams that function more like a traditional brokerage.” According to Black, both models face challenges, especially in changing markets.

Smaller, high-performing teams can be more flexible; Large teams with low productivity per agent are more likely to feel stressed as volume drops. Her advice for team leaders is pragmatic: focus on clarity and culture. Systems ensure consistency, but culture ensures longevity.

Looking ahead: the next decade

This year marks ten years since Black launched her company. But instead of looking back, she looks forward. “I call this the end of an era,” she says. “Our community is evolving. I see us shifting to a more collaborative, community-driven model – something that feels less corporate and more connected.”

That future, she adds, includes more writing, more speaking and continued advocacy for women in leadership. Her advice for the next generation of women leaders? “Invest in your profession,” she says. “Be so good…they can’t ignore you. Always show up and say yes…show up and be prepared.” And: “Be a friend to other leaders in rooms where you are not.”

Ten years from now, Black hopes to be doing what she loves most: speaking, writing and traveling – still teaching, still learning. But the impact she wants to leave extends beyond real estate. She wants people to see that strength and empathy can coexist, and that transformation in any industry is possible if you build from integrity. It goes back to the simple line on that cup that started the service, and the message remains the same: “The most dangerous thing you can ever do is get rich doing something you don’t love.”