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