Hi, I'm Vanessa De Jesus Guzman, LPC, NCC
I didn't set out to build a training brand. I just kept answering the same questions.Therapists who work with kids kept finding me. In Facebook groups, after speaking engagements, in the hallways of conferences. Always with the same kinds of questions...
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How do you set up your office,
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How do you write a 504 letter,
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How do you run social skills groups,
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How do you build school relationships that send referrals,
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And how do you keep a full cash pay practice.
I kept answering them, one conversation at a time, because I genuinely love this work and I had figured some things out that most people hadn't.Eventually it became obvious... this needed to exist as something more than a DM or coffee chat.
Earning a clinical license is hard enough.
Finding success in private practice shouldn't be.
The path to licensure takes everything you have... the coursework, the supervision hours, the exams, the late nights, the years of showing up before anyone was paying you what you were worth. By the time most therapists make it through all of that and open a private practice, they've already proven they can do the hard thing. What nobody prepares them for is what comes next.
There's no roadmap for what it actually looks like to sit across from a child who doesn't want to be there, manage a parent who wants a full debrief after every session, write a letter that a school will act on, or build a practice that doesn't require trading every hour of your life for a dollar. Most of us figure that out alone, one uncomfortable moment at a time.
That's the gap The Kid Clinician was built to fill - not the clinical skills, you've already got those - but everything else.
18 Year Experience
as a Teacher & School Counselor
Board Certified Licensed Professional Counselor
Private Practice Owner & Multi-Business Founder
EMDR Trained
Play Therapy Trained
Sandtray Trained
Award Winning Speaker &
Podcast Host
How I got here...
I've worked with kids for 20+ years... first as a classroom teacher, then as a school counselor, and now as a licensed therapist running a cash pay private practice in New Jersey. I didn't leave education because I fell out of love with kids. I left because I wanted to go deeper with them than the system would allow. And honestly... I wasn't being paid what that work was worth.
What 18 years inside schools gave me was something most clinicians don't have. I know how schools actually work. I know what a teacher sees that a parent often misses. I know what language moves a school administrator and what gets filed and forgotten. I know what it looks like to sit on every side of the table that surrounds a child... and I bring all of that into everything I teach.
As a first-generation Latina running a cash pay practice, I also bring a cultural lens to this work that shapes how I think about the families we serve, the systems we navigate, and the clinicians we're building into. That perspective isn't an add-on. It's woven into everything here.
CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA
The rest of the picture...
Outside of The Kid Clinician, I'm the...
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CEO and founder of Free to Be Mindful, a private practice in Ridgefield, New Jersey
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Founder of Amiga Moms™, a coaching platform for high-achieving mom leaders
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Co-founder of the Latinx Practice Collective, a coaching and community platform for Latinx private practice owners, which powers the Connect Therapy Directory
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Host of the Free to Be Mindful Podcast, now six years in with 300+ episodes
At home I'm a wife, a mom to a tween and a toddler (which means I'm living in two very different developmental stages simultaneously and it informs this work more than I can explain), and a therapy dog mom to Ollie... who you'll see all over this brand because he earns his keep.