Greater Impact as a Therapist

An interview with Kiaundra Jackson, LMFT about how to grow a big impact through personal branding, speaking, and breaking into larger media channels. Curt and Katie talk with Kiaundra about the importance of authenticity, owning your credibility, and diversifying your income through alternate methods to get your message out there.

It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

Interview with Kiaundra Jackson, LMFT

Kiaundra Jackson is known as America’s #1 Relationship Therapist. She has been seen on OWN’s new hit TV Show, Love Goals and as a reoccurring expert on The Doctors. She has been recently featured in Oprah’s Magazine, Essence, The New York Times, FOX, The CW, BET, Vice and The Huffington Post as one of the ‘10 Black Female Therapists You Should Know.’ She is an award-winning speaker, best-selling author, TV Personality and a trusted Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist that gets results. She is a noted expert on healthy relationships and mental health. Kiaundra is the visionary of KW Couples Therapy and the Co-Founder of Black Speakers Rock.

Through her early work, she discovered the importance of having healthy relationships. From that point on, she chose to specialize in helping couples strengthen and repair their relationships. She helps to improve intimacy with couples by increasing effective two-way communication. She is dedicated to helping couples increase sexual, physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. Kiaundra specializes in working with couples who truly desire to maintain a healthy, long-lasting relationship and uncover their true potential.

Kiaundra’s vision is to help ONE MILLION couples heal their relationships, prevent divorce, and keep families together.

In this episode we talk about:

Kiaundra’s goal of helping therapists create an impact beyond the therapy room
The importance of being authentic and showing up the same way wherever you are (on a stage or in the therapy room)
Intentional effort to make your public persona through your expertise, your credibility, and your self – based on the story people might tell about you when you’re not there, living out loud
How to claim your credibility, even when you’re not ready to believe it
Therapists have a huge wealth of knowledge, so we need to identify what we want to talk about
The vulnerability of putting yourself on a larger stage
Combatting the haters by focusing on those people who do love you or resonate with you
Impostor Syndrome based on being vulnerable and in the public eye
“People don’t always watch you because they want to see you to win, they’re waiting for that one moment for you to mess up.” – Kiaundra Jackson, LMFT
We have to put this aside and show up every time
The importance of showing up more consistently on social media, especially with live videos
Showing up in your community – speaking at smaller events, giving back to our community
The ability to give more information to your applications for conferences or podcast interviews, if you have a social media presence
How to use a larger brand to impact others, serve others, and diversify income
Things to consider when making a decision on what you do – core values, financial compensation, and connection – as well as sorting through what is beneficial
There is nothing wrong with doing free speaking engagements – but you need to be strategic about it
The additional benefits you can ask for when getting a free or lower paid speaking offer
Make sure your target audience is in the audience where you are speaking (and you’re talking about what you’d like to work on, your expertise, and how you’d like to grow)
The hard lessons of saying yes when you should have probably said no – not aligned, not organized (with their business together), when you don’t feel good about what you did that day
Owning your growth edges and moving forward
How the pandemic has impacted speaking and presenting
Kiaundra’s courses to support new and emerging speakers

Resources mentioned:

We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!

Kiaundra Jackson’s website

Kiaundra Jackson on Instagram

Kiaundra’s Courses

Relevant Episodes:

The Brand Called You

Get Paid to Speak

Crafting Your Authentic Message

Interview with Stevon Lewis, LMFT: Let’s Talk About Race

Connect with us!

Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group

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Our consultation services:

The Fifty-Minute Hour

Who we are:

Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, the CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also Past President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

A Quick Note:

Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.

Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.