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Kristen Live is a South Florida-based lifestyle influencer with a background in psychology. A former marriage and family/addictions Therapist turned full-time content creator, Kristen represents one third of the Toxics Anonymous podcast, a safe space for recovering toxics to recognize and admit to their toxic traits, share testimonies, toxic tales, and learn coping strategies to lead individuals away from a toxic cycle. You can follow Kristen Live on all major social networks including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter. You can also listen to Kristen on the Toxics Anonymous podcast on Spotify, iHeartRadio, YouTube, and more.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
I got my master’s degree in psychology back in 2015, so it was quite a while ago. I did work in the field for two years. I worked as a therapist for addictions, so an addictions counselor, marriage and family therapist per se. And then I kind of just took a different route because I had a lot of opportunities with the social media world. At the time, it was just kind of starting to begin to boom. There wasn’t really necessarily influencers back then, but there was a lot of modeling jobs and that kind of stuff. So I started going that route in more of the arts and entertainment, and then the rest was history. Once the social media stuff started going, I definitely paid a little bit more attention to that. So I left my job as a therapist and I’ve been doing this ever since.
You’re part of a new podcast and you hit the ground running. I saw one of the guests recently was Jamie Foxx, so that’s off to a really good start!
Yeah, that was our second episode. Jamie is a really good friend of ours, so he did us a huge favor, which is amazing, just to kind of give our podcast a little notoriety. So yeah, we started off with a bang, but my podcast is called Toxics Anonymous, and it’s kind of a play on words of what I used to do as a therapist.
Photo courtesy of Kristen Live
So I did addictions counseling, and a lot of the therapist support groups are called Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous. So Toxics Anonymous is kind of the same idea. This is a support group for people that have either lived in toxic environments or are toxic themselves and want to get out of those kind of situations.
They tune into Toxics Anonymous, so we discuss solutions and different testimonies, conversations between people that either have expertise of how to not be toxic, how to get out of toxic situations, or people that are toxic and are looking for ways to change.
Sounds like it encompasses all of us to a certain degree. We probably all have a trait or two that we could do better on.
Absolutely. Myself included. So that’s kind of how we start each episode: “I’m a former toxic girl. Nice to meet you guys!”
Let’s talk brand partnerships. What have been some of your favorites, or have there been any that have been a little off-base?
I’ve had a lot of those. I mean I generally don’t take those kind of deals when it doesn’t coincide with my brand but I’ve worked with some pretty big brands like Samsung, Netflix, Amazon, that kind of stuff. So on those kinds of scale, I feel like those can encompass any influencer that’s like any influencer stream to work with those kind of brands. But when I see something that I don’t really agree with or I don’t use, I tend to stay away from that kind of thing. Or I say, “Okay, well, I’m interested to try your product, but I would like to try it for a month or so just to see if I like it and see if this is something that I can promote.”
With all that you have going on with your podcast, with your social media, everything, how do you structure your average day so you can get everything completed that you want to get completed and still have a little bit of time for yourself?
It never works off of a schedule. It’s always just random. So every week is different. I think that that’s actually a good thing for me because I’m someone that has a very short attention span. So I like that I never know what to expect. I know that’s not for everybody, but for me, I do have certain things that are locked in routine. I have a schedule of when I have to post every day, and I know that around from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern Time is when I’m putting a hard post on social media, usually a reel or a TikTok or whatnot. I usually run those two platforms. Luckily, I can link my Facebook to that so that it’s not posting on every single platform independently. And then at 7:30 PM, I go live every day, Monday through Friday. So those things are set in stone.
Photo courtesy of Kristen Live
Those really just keep a schedule for my followers to expect, that they’re going to see me around these kind of times, and it keeps them a lot more engaged. And then other that, as far as content days, it’s just whatever comes up. It might be off location.
I might be out of the country, getting content. So I have to really be flexible with that sort of thing because luckily, a lot of content can be created remotely. You don’t necessarily have to be in a specific location to create those things. You just have to bring certain things that you need with you. So I like to be flexible. I like to keep it open as possible.
Can you think of several dream podcast guests that you would love to speak to?
So what’s really funny is that a lot of our audience really wants to see a cross interview with Andrew Tate. I’m not a fan of Andrew Tate at all. It’s actually the opposite, but we believe on the podcast that he’s so toxic, I think it would be an interesting interview. Although I don’t like to call it guest interviews.
Photo courtesy of Kristen Live
It’s not an interview, it’s a podcast so it’s more of a conversation. So it would be more of like a co-host or a guest host, but I guess the people are looking for something like that. So I don’t know, maybe that or another thing they were saying a toxic couple. They were like, “Maybe get Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in there,” or something to have a conversation about their toxic relationship.
What can we expect from the podcast or from you as your personal brand in 2023?
So currently now we’re just trying to get more… We’re only on episode eight of our podcasts, so we’re just trying to get it out there. And we’ve had some great guests already, but I think we’re going to scale back a little bit and just do more solo episodes. So it’s me and two of my good friends that host the podcast, Aisha Thalia and Baby Dee. And we want our viewers to get to know us as a unit, and that way you’ll keep on coming back for more rather than just being like, “Oh, I’m just going to tune in just because Jamie Foxx was on the show.” And then that way you’ll get to know the way that we think and our different unique personalities and then you could figure out which hosts you like the best and whatnot. And you could be either Team Kristen or Team Baby Dee, Team Aisha, whatever it is. So we’re going to start focusing a little bit more on that, the individual branding of the podcast.
Wonderful. So where do we send people to go hear it?
We’re actually available on a lot of the platforms, so most of the major platforms, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, also YouTube has our video podcast, iHeartRadio. And pretty much anywhere that you get your podcast, you could find us.
Note: Influencer Spotlight interviews are edited for time and clarity.
Andrew is the Head of Client Services for Intellifluence and has a background in communications. He is committed to helping brands get the most out of their campaigns and is the co-host of the Influencer Spotlight series.
