Katie Kimball Gained Confidence After Landing 2 TEDx Talks
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Feb,2022

Katie Kimball Gained Confidence and National Fame After Landing Two TEDx Talks with Thought-Leader

Katie Kimball is a former teacher and self-proclaimed academic. At the young age of preschool, Katie already knew she would be a teacher. She went to college, earned her teaching degree, and taught for two years.

During her first pregnancy, Katie Kimball decided to get herself and her husband off processed foods and get healthy. However, she was appalled by the state of food in the US, and she questioned what to eat. Even more overwhelming was the thought of trying to feed her baby nourishing food once he was born.

Katie Kimball cut back on teaching to raise her child, but her husband had an entry-level job. Katie wanted to support her children’s education but also knew she needed to earn an income. This struggle led her to create strategies that work not just for her family but families around the nation.

The Health Crisis That Launched Katie Kimball’s Journey

Katie Kimball’s husband was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease when they were dating, but he didn’t have symptoms when they first got married. However, once married, her husband had a massive flare-up. To help him, she implemented an elimination diet. As a result, what her husband’s prescriptions couldn’t do for two months, she fixed in just two days. This success further propelled her:

  • Health initiative for her kids.
  • To ask how she could teach others to experience her husband’s success.

It morphed into an idea for Kitchen Stewardship:

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Balance family nutrition

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Your Budget

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The Environment

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And Your Time

Katie Kimball wanted to help other moms balance everything that previously overwhelmed her. A book seemed like a great place to launch her idea. In 2008, Katie Kimball started a blog to test her book idea. This blog was the beginning of Kitchen Stewardship, Katie Kimball’s website built to teach healthy eating.

Six months into blogging, she installed a plugin to see how many people read and how many readers she had. She thought she only had a hundred or so followers, and to her surprise, she had 500 readers. This discovery propelled her to keep going.

Katie Kimball’s Realization

Katie Kimball’s Kitchen Stewardship initiative grew into a business that allowed her husband to leave his corporate job. Once he came home, she had extra time to piece her business together. The idea of teaching kids to cook and be at home in the kitchen inspired her.

Katie Kimball Kids Cook Real Food Course

She realized she also wanted to teach her kids to cook so that when they went off to college, they would know how to incorporate something other than frozen pizza into their diet. This dream launched an e-course. To motivate herself to create this curriculum, every Monday at 10 a.m., she invited one friend of each of her kids over and taught them all kitchen basics.

My teacher’s heart wouldn’t stop talking.

Katie Kimball

Owner Kitchen Stewardship, Kids Cook Real Food and TEDx Speaker

However, even though Katie’s message was spreading, parents still weren’t walking around saying, “I wish I could teach my kids to cook.” So, she knew she had to start by educating parents why it is essential to teach kids to cook so they would be interested in her program.

Katie Kimball’s Journey To The TEDx Stage

While Katie Kimball had landed some local TV gigs and naturally networked well, her biggest challenge was getting a return on her investment (ROI). But unfortunately, she earned zero ROI from her media efforts.

Even with her TV gigs and other interviews, she couldn’t get a national pitch because the ROI wasn’t coming. She thought maybe the TEDx platform would help amplify her message. Her mother reminded her, “It’s never too late to see from a new perspective.” With this in mind and her business thriving, Katie Kimball knew she wanted to go national with her message.

How Thought-Leader Helped Katie Kimball Land 2 TEDx Talks!

Katie Kimball heard TEDx speaker and Thought-Leader President Taylor Conroy speak at a conference and decided to work with Thought-Leader. Passionate about efficiency, she loved having a spreadsheet of locations, TEDx deadlines, and walking through the TEDx process with someone who had already been there. After working with her Thought-Leader coach, Katie Kimball applied to over 45 TEDx events.

It’s challenging to stay motivated, on task, and understand what to do. That’s why I wanted to work with Thought-Leader.

“It’s challenging to stay motivated, on task, and understand what to do. That’s why I wanted to work with Thought-Leader. There’s a system. This insider knowledge of how TEDx events work makes a massive difference in the application process. I wanted that accountability.”

She learned that landing a TEDx talk is a strategic process. You don’t just apply to a TEDx event, and hope fairies grant your wish. It takes time, effort, dedication, and commitment. Luckily, her Thought-Leader team was there each step of the way. Finally, after countless applications, Katie Kimball landed a TEDx talk for August 2020.

Unfortunately, just nine days before the event, with her talk prepared and memorized, COVID-19 postponed Katie’s TEDx until the following year. However, Katie felt an urge within her that people needed her talk now.

Families were stuck at home, spending extra time cooking, and in a global pandemic. So some healthy guidance would be hugely beneficial.

Katie Kimball Takes Action

 

Eager to share her message, Katie Kimball rented a stage, filmed it herself, and bootstrap released it. Not only did she rent the stage for herself, but she also invited other speakers from the Thought-Leader community to film there. She says that critical thinking is the key to our children’s self-esteem, our family connection, and the future of our culture. So it was time to get her message, and others’ messages, out there.

Katie then had to create a new talk with a new topic for the August 2021 TEDx stage, and critical thinking in kids has never felt more important:

Katie Kimball Lands Her Second TEDx Talk

 

While filming her first video, Katie submitted a 60-second mini talk to a 2020 TEDx event. This second submission landed Katie a second TEDx talk.

Webinar Hosted by Taylor CTA

In her work with families worldwide, Katie knew that other parents stayed up at night worried about picky eaters and getting their children the nutrition they need. Parents feel a lot of guilt and shame on this issue like it’s their fault their kids don’t eat well, but through her training, Katie knew that there are many root causes to picky eating, and parenting isn’t one of them. She knew she had to take this message to the stage, which led to the content for her second TEDx talk.

Watch Katie’s Second TEDx Talk

With Katie’s guidance, families now see improvements in their kids’ picky eating, and she uses this as a door to get kids into the kitchen. As a result, countless families experience many benefits as they teach their children critical thinking and cooking skills.

Whether you have toddlers, feisty 7-year-olds, or pre-teens, your children will thrive if you train them in curiosity, adaptability, and resilience.

Katie Kimball Kids Cook

Landing her second TEDx talk continues to justify that Katie is the national voice for healthy kids cooking and reinforced her successful founding of the Kids Cook Real Food eCourse (recommended by The Wall Street Journal in 2020 as the best online cooking class for kids).

Katie Kimball Experiences National Fame After Giving Her TEDx Talks

Since her first TEDx talk, Katie Kimball learned that you have to do the hard work and market yourself even on the TEDx platform. Due to her work ethic, academic spirit, and the help of the Thought-Leader community, she is now a two-time TEDx speaker and has earned notoriety among online entrepreneurs. Because of the TEDx talk, she even landed an OpEd article at a niché news site.

I’ve been very impressed working with Thought-Leader…I feel confident now that I’m a better speaker and speechwriter and have this street credit among colleagues.

“I’ve been very impressed working with Thought-Leader. There’s lots of personal advice from Taylor. He shows up and has built a great team. I feel confident now that I’m a better speaker and speechwriter and have this street credit among colleagues.”

Katie Kimball has appeared on podcasts, television, and in-person, including WZZM, Fox News, Buzzfeed, HuffPost, and Pop Sugar. Thanks to TEDx, her Thought-Leader team, and her hard work, what started as a message in her kitchen at 10 a.m. on Mondays, she now she shares nationally:

“Critical thinking will impact every decision your children will make and, in turn, determine the world your grandchildren inherit.”

Katie Kimball is on a mission. She successfully connects families around healthy food and raises critical thinking skills through the kitchen lab of curiosity. Through her story, Katie Kimball shows families around the nation that it is possible to be environmentally friendly and eat real food, all without losing your sanity.

Author

Joelle Cullimore
Marketing Content Manager
Sarah Rexford
Content Writer

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