Today we’d like to introduce you to Kenni King.
Hi Kenni, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My story has never been particularly linear. But looking back, I can see a thread running through all of it: this stubborn belief that where we begin does not have to determine where we end up.
I grew up, like many others, in a home exposed to addiction, violence, and a lot of responsibility at a very young age. I counted down the years until I could leave. I imagined adulthood as this magical dividing line between the life I had been given and the one I might someday create for myself. But at seventeen, before I ever got the chance to leave, I realized I was in a fight for my life. At that point, I was physically, mentally, and emotionally circling the drain. I stood in front of a bathroom mirror knowing something had to change and that, ultimately, I had two choices: live or die.
I wanted my life to be over. But somewhere inside me was still an unrelenting, stubborn belief that there was purpose in everything I had been through. So I summoned all the strength I had left and dared myself to stay alive. And I promised myself that someday, I would write it all down. I was hospitalized for eleven days, but when I was released, I returned to the same unstable environment I’d left. There was no magical before-and-after moment where everything suddenly became easier. I simply started fighting for myself. Eventually, I put thousands of miles between myself and my childhood. I earned a business degree, multiple coaching certifications, managed and developed teams, became an entrepreneur, went to therapy, did a lot of healing, and kept becoming.
Over time, healing became less about becoming some perfectly “healed” version of myself. It became about understanding what I was carrying, having compassion for the parts of me that learned how to survive, and recognizing that I still had a say in what happened next.
The fight for myself became the work I now get to do with others.
Through Kenni-Richelle Coaching, I work with big-hearted, multi-passionate people who have overcome massive obstacles and somehow still refuse to do anything less than create something amazing with this life. They are entrepreneurs, leaders, professionals, and visionaries who know there’s another level available to them, but sometimes discover an invisible ceiling between where they are and where they know they’re capable of going.
I’ve spent more than thirteen years supporting people through leadership, business, and personal transformation, and I’ve learned that strategy matters, but strategy alone isn’t always enough. Sometimes the work is about dismantling an old belief. Sometimes it’s learning to trust yourself again. Sometimes it’s realizing you don’t need more pressure; you need permission to stop proving and start becoming.
I had to become a fierce advocate for myself to survive and, eventually, to thrive.
Now I get to be a fierce advocate for other people’s highest potential.
And this year, that work is expanding beyond my coaching practice. On October 5, my first book, Alchemized: When the Wound Becomes Wisdom and Trauma Becomes Fuel, will be released. In many ways, the book and my coaching ask the same question from different directions: What becomes possible when we stop allowing what has shaped us to limit what comes next?
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I think one of the greatest disservices we do to ourselves is expecting the road to become smooth once we’ve done enough healing, learned enough lessons, or finally gotten our lives “together.”
For a long time, I thought there would be this finish line. I would heal enough, achieve enough, become self-aware enough, and eventually arrive at some version of myself who was completely unbothered. She does not exist. And, I don’t think she’s supposed to.
Entrepreneurship is one of the most confronting personal development journeys we’ll ever sign up for. I’ve navigated depression and anxiety, ADHD, C-PTSD, heartbreak, complicated relationships, loss, business challenges, financial uncertainty, and the humbling experience of realizing that sometimes the pattern you thought you healed shows up in the most unexpected places. This can cause us to stifle our potential and business growth. I’ve seen my clients struggle in similar ways, violating their own boundaries for the fear of losing a client. A potential client ghosts which activates an old abandonment wound. Holding back in marketing due to visibility fears.
Sometimes growth has looked like making the brave decision. Sometimes it has looked like admitting I made the wrong one. Sometimes it has been building something I’m wildly proud of, and sometimes it has been sitting in my therapist’s office realizing I still have so much work to do. There have also been times when my greatest strengths became my greatest liabilities and vice versa.
I learned very young how to read a room, anticipate needs, be responsible, keep going, and take care of people. Those skills helped me survive. They also helped me become a leader and an entrepreneur. But unchecked, some of those same qualities became hypervigilance, over-responsibility, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and a tendency to believe that if I could just work harder, understand more, or love someone better, I could control the outcome.
I couldn’t.
That has probably been one of the hardest and most freeing lessons of my life.
There is a philosophy at the center of my work called radical truth. For me, it means being willing to tell the truth about where you are without using that truth as evidence of where you have to stay.
I can acknowledge that something hurt me without building my identity around the wound. I can have compassion for why I developed a pattern and still take responsibility for changing it. I can love someone and recognize that a relationship isn’t healthy for me. I can be incredibly grateful for my life and still have a hard day. I can be powerful and need support.
Those things can exist together.
I’ve also had to unlearn the belief that success is something we force through sheer effort. I spent a lot of my life proving: proving I could survive, proving I could succeed, proving I could handle it, proving I didn’t need anyone.
Eventually, I realized I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life proving that I was capable of carrying more.
I wanted to create a life I actually have the capacity to enjoy.
That changed the way I approached my healing, my relationships, my business, and the way I coach. I’m much more interested now in alignment, authenticity, inner authority, and expanding our capacity to hold the lives we’re creating than I am in piling more pressure onto already capable people.
That’s the thread running through most of our struggles: learning the difference between surviving and becoming.
The road hasn’t been smooth. I don’t expect it to become smooth.
But I’ve gotten much better at trusting myself on it.
And when life inevitably hands me another challenge I didn’t ask for, I know now that I don’t have to pretend it’s beautiful.
I get to decide what I make from it.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Kenni-Richelle Coaching?
At the simplest level, I help people win, personally and professionally. Kenni-Richelle Coaching is a success coaching and business strategy practice for visionaries, entrepreneurs, ambitious professionals, industry disruptors, personal development junkies, and people who have a vision for their lives or the world that is bigger than themselves.
Most of the people who come to us aren’t lacking information. They’re smart, self-aware, incredibly resourceful people who have already created a certain level of success. They’ve done the work. And still, they know there’s more. That’s where I love to work. Sometimes there is a very practical problem in front of us: grow the business, make more money, navigate a career move, lead the team better, clarify the offer, simplify an overwhelming business, or finally make the decision they’ve been circling for six months. We’ll absolutely solve that problem. But I’m also interested in who is making the decisions.
Sometimes what looks like a strategy problem isn’t a strategy problem at all. It’s an identity or capacity gap. You can have the right strategy and still have an old belief, an unconscious pattern, perfectionism, fear, or an outdated version of yourself putting a cap on what you’re able to create. So yes, we’ll start with clear goals, streamlined systems, and practical steps. And then we’ll uncover what’s happening underneath them. That’s where the practical meets the magic.
My work is ultimately about helping someone collapse the distance between their current reality and their highest potential. We identify the patterns driving their decisions, dismantle the limitations that no longer belong, recalibrate how they see themselves, expand their capacity for the next level, and then make that next level feel normal enough that they can actually live there.
I support my clients in creating success, freedom, impact, relationships, money, creativity, adventure, and whatever else matters to them, and have the capacity to actually enjoy it.
One of the things that sets our work apart is that you get to bring the whole person into the room. You don’t have to pretend the thing keeping you awake at 2 a.m. isn’t affecting the executive making decisions at 9 a.m. You don’t have to separate ambition from humanity.
Business is personal. Leadership is personal. Success is personal.
My background reflects that intersection. I have a degree in Business and advanced certifications across health, life, professional, and transformational coaching, and I’ve spent more than thirteen years supporting sales professionals, entrepreneurs, wellness experts, executives, and high-impact leaders. I’ve also spoken for organizations and communities and facilitated boutique retreats across the U.S. and Mexico.
But credentials aren’t what I’m most proud of.
I’m proud of the client who makes the decision she’s been afraid to make. The one who triples her bookings. The one who lands the dream job. The one who closes the million-dollar partnership. The one who finally stops shrinking herself to make other people comfortable. The one who looks around one day and realizes she’s living inside something we once talked about as a dream.
That never gets old. I’ve described myself for years as a Fierce Advocate for Your Highest Potential, and that phrase is deeply personal to me. I get to be a fierce advocate for what’s possible for others while helping them achieve it.
Whether I’m coaching someone privately, speaking to a room, leading a retreat, strategizing a business, or writing a book, the heartbeat of my work is pretty simple: This life is so very brief, and my goal is to get you to your death bed in a state of pride and gratitude for the adventure you created with yours.
What matters most to you? Why?
Freedom.
Not freedom in the way I understood it as a kid, when freedom simply meant getting out. I mean the kind of freedom that comes from knowing yourself deeply enough to make choices that are aligned with your soul. The freedom to change your mind. To want more. To decide you’ve had enough. To leave something that no longer fits. To build something wildly ambitious. To rest. To love people without abandoning yourself. To ask for help. To take up space. To create a definition of success that may make absolutely no sense to anyone else.
For a long time, I was incredibly focused on what I could overcome. I could survive this. Fix that. Carry more. Work harder. Figure it out. Keep going. And I’m proud of that woman. She got me here. But I don’t want survival to be the focus of my life. I want to be fully alive for it. That’s what matters most to me.
This life is so unbelievably brief. We get this tiny, strange, beautiful window of time to love people, make things, change our minds, screw things up, begin again, laugh until we can’t breathe, take risks, tell the truth, create something meaningful, and experience what it is to be here. That’s probably why personal agency matters so much to me. There are parts of our stories we don’t get to choose. I know that intimately. Sometimes life hands us things that are devastating, unfair, or completely outside our control.
But I am endlessly fascinated by the question: What is mine to choose now?
Maybe I can’t change what happened, but what do I want to carry forward?
What do I want to create?
Who do I want to become?
What do I want to say yes to while I’m here?
That’s also why I’m such a fierce advocate for other people’s potential. I love that moment when someone begins to see a possibility for themselves that they couldn’t see before. My work, my relationships, my writing, Alchemized – they all come back to that in one way or another.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.KenniRichelleCoaching.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/kenni_richelle
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/kennirichelle
- Other: https://kenniking.substack.com
