Plant the seeds and watch them grow. Licensed psychologist Dr. Joy Harden Bradford – host of the wildly popular and ever-necessary Therapy For Black Girls podcast, probably would have never imagined just how much her "seeds" would flourish.
However, after chatting with her about her career growth since launching the platform in April 2017, and getting to know her on a personal level, I will say this: Her desire to continue to find a way to get mental health information to Black women in a way they can relate – is always guiding her next steps.
Dr. Joy Harden Bradford
Courtesy
The Louisiana native always knew she wanted to work in the psychology field – but was unsure of what her specialty would be. It wasn't until her doctorate studies in Counseling Psychology at The University of Georgia did Dr. Joy realized she had found her sweet spot. "My PhD program groomed me for what I'm doing now. All of my work was centered on Black women and Black graduate students."
She then went on to work at the Counseling Center at Georgia Southern University and later transitioned into full-time private practice work. Her specialty became helping women recover from breakups with her passion for holding space for Black women to become the best possible version of themselves at the core of her work.
Podcasting was a growing interest, but wasn't a skill she had perfected. "I always listened to a ton of podcasts. It always felt like something I would likely do, but I didn't know how. I had already been blogging on the Therapy For Black Girls website but it felt like I could do something different with the podcast."
So, she put in the work: Conducted research, took courses on launching a podcast, and got her community excited. Note: Having a husband with a production background was an added bonus.
Now over 85 episodes, a 19,000+ member Facebook group, and 2.5 million downloads later with features on major outlets such as Forbes, Women's Health, The Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, and Essence – Therapy For Black Girls reaches women globally covering topics such as entrepreneurship, breakups, pregnancy and fertility, self-sabotage, social media, colorism, body image and more. "I never imagined that it would pick up steam so quickly. I figured I'd have to do a lot more marketing and figure out how to grow it."
The need for Therapy For Black Girls is real. Dr. Joy contributes most of her growth to word-of-mouth recommendations, having a solid college student listenership, and consistent community social media sharing. Viral retweets about the Therapy For Black Girls therapist directory by celebrity fans such as Solange also helped. (That one retweet crashed the Therapy For Black Girls website for a week!)
Behind the couch, Dr. Joy notes that her personal ability to "trust her intuition" served as a foundation for her practice's success and is something she brings to her show. She's in-tune with her audience and even incorporates popular culture into her show themes.
"When we talk about mental health, there's a tendency to only talk about depression and anxiety. There are a lot of other things that go into our mental health. I wanted to expand the conversation and help Black women get connected to resources that can help them if they felt like they needed help...the emails that I get from people who listen talk about how they learn something new and how an episode touched them… and how they are going to reach out to a therapist because of me [touch me]. I thought eventually it would get to that place, but to be what it has been now has been amazing."
The speed of growth was something to which Dr. Joy had to adjust. She added a virtual assistant and social media manager to her team. More opportunities came, such as guesting at popular podcast live shows (The Friend Zone and Gettin' Grown).
"Building the Therapy For Black Girls brand was my intention from the beginning. I've always been the face of the brand, but now there feels like a need to create a separate brand outside of Therapy For Black Girls because not all of my press opportunities have been solely about Black women in therapy. They have been about my expertise as a psychologist and how I can have conversations about pop culture and other things. The Dr. Joy brand is now an emerging brand."
The thing about nursing any seed though is that when you put in the work, you will have interested spectators. Then what?
"Put the work out there, and be consistent. It will take you a long way."
In December 2018, Dr. Joy was invited to be co-host alongside Angela Simmons on MTV's Teen Mom: Young + Pregnant reunion special – her first TV hosting gig. This came about after responding to a pitch from an MTV talent producer. Though she sent in her media clips and didn't hear back for six months, she gladly accepted the job and got to work (a common theme of her story) on prepping. She credits her legal team for helping to navigate the specifics during such a tight time crunch.
"Even though it can be exciting and the temptation may be to not pay attention to contracts, there were things that they thought about in the contract negotiation, such as my compensation and my rights, that I would have never thought about. It's always good to have conversations with people that do this on a more frequent basis than you do."
When you're building the dream and looking for more opportunities to broaden your impact, the most important thing you can do is continue to do the work. "You can have a publicist and look bright and shiny but if you're not credible and you can't talk to the kinds of things that they want you to talk about, it won't really matter," Dr. Joy reminds us. "Now I know that there are talent departments [whose sole job is] to look for people like me to do this kind of thing. Put the work out there, and be consistent. It will take you a long way."
However, growing both the Dr. Joy and Therapy For Black Girls brands isn't exempt from challenges. Managing schedules – all while being a wife and mother to two young boys, all while balancing her personal commitments and self-care routines can be tough.
"During the Teen Mom prep, there were also a lot of schedule changes. That was the weekend of my college homecoming and sorority reunion, so I completely rearranged my schedule. It's a lot, given that I also have two small children. Being able to be flexible with your schedule helps because I don't know that you always have a lot of time to prepare and get ready for these kinds of opportunities."
Setting clear boundaries (a topic often discussed on the show) with listeners has also been important as the platform's popularity rises. Hence, the ever-present disclaimer that opens each show: "And while I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for a licensed mental health professional."
Moral of the story? When there's a need, there's always room to find a way to fill it. Find the void. Identify your platform of choice and execute. The best part about creating your own path is the ability to define success for yourself. "Therapy For Black Girls is helping women take their mental health more seriously. That's all I ever set out to do."
Dr. Joy BTS with Angela Simmons for MTV's Teen Mom Reunion Special
"Therapy For Black Girls is helping women take their mental health more seriously. That's all I ever set out to do."
It's also inspiring the future generation of mental health professionals and culture changers.
"Someone in my Instagram comments commented how cool it was to see me [hosting Teen Mom] because she had grown up watching Dr. Drew do this and often thought, 'Could I be doing something that he's doing?' To see me doing it, opens up options for people who don't know or think that this is something you can do with the degree. [Me stepping into opportunities like this] also helps more therapists expand their ideas about what we can do with our degrees. Sometimes we only think we can see clients in our office or within an agency. Seeing Black female therapists on TV is very sparse. You typically don't see diversity in terms of who is represented on these shows. It's important that these companies are being more active in trying to find people from diverse backgrounds."
If you're trying to find the courage to take risks and pursue your own dreams, Dr. Joy suggests staying away from overconsumption of social media, scheduling, investing in coaching, and cultivating a strong support system.
The Therapy For Black Girlsempire continues to grow. In late 2018, Dr. Joy launched the Yellow Couch Collective - a space for Black women "to gather, support, encourage, and learn from one another."
This is only the beginning – and Dr. Joy – calmly, but with a joyous excitement – knows it.
"It's always been my goal to have an advice column in a [major Black woman's publication]. A part of these expanding opportunities, I've always thought about, but not necessarily TV. I would absolutely do TV hosting again! It's still too new to me to go too far in imagining what this could become. I'm open to what's next for sure."
We'll be here rooting for you.
Photos via Dr. Joy Harden Bradford.
To learn more about Dr. Joy & Therapy For Black Girls, visit www.therapyforblackgirls.com or follow @hellodrjoy & @therapyforblackgirls on Instagram.
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak