We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kenneth Woods a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kenneth, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

I’m so thankful for the way my parents raised me! They were 21 living in Hawaii when they had me. As young parents in the military, they the best they knew how. One of the things they did that has impacted my life up until this very day was encourage my love of reading. Once they realized that I loved to read, they bought me so many books! My mom used to read to my siblings and I all the time when we were little, and I think that made me love reading even more. When I wanted to collect comic books or read series like “Animorphs” or the “Redwall” series by the late Brian Jacques, they were totally on board. I loved reading, even when I wasn’t supposed to be doing it. I remember in like 5th grade, it was early in the morning and we were waiting to leave to go to school. The lights were off and we were told not to read in the dark, but there I was trying to sneak in some reading before we left. When I was caught and asked what I was doing, I told my mother, “I’m not reading, I’m just looking at the words!” My mother laughed so loud and long, and I just know she probably called up her family to tell her what I said. I ended up getting grounded for being disobedient, but it wasn’t that bad.

Another thing my parents did right was not force me to be who I wasn’t. They didn’t try to make me join sports teams or do things boys stereotypically did back in the 90s. Matter of fact, they embraced the fact that I was nerdy and liked to read and bragged about it to their friends and family. When asked about what sports I played, my mother and father used to say that chess was my sport. They even bought me a book called “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess.” I LOVED spiders and my parents got me a pet tarantula in my teenage years. Whatever I was interested in, they let me explore it and supported me. I’ll always love and appreciate them for that. There’s no way I’d be the person and creative I am without them.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Kenneth L. Woods and I go by the stage name KennyFresh. I have been performing poetry and spoken word for the last decade plus. I wrote my first poem when I was in college after a little heartbreak. I found out that I like writing poetry, even though I hated writing when I was in school. I often say that my love of writing grew out of a love of reading. I never really thought much about it until my maternal grandfather passed away. I attended his wake with my poetry notebook in tow. I knew I wanted to say some words but had no idea what I wanted to say. Forty-five minutes before the wake started, the words to a poem came to me. and I read it. People seemed to appreciate it and I thought nothing of it until the following year when I recited that poem for the lady who was preparing my taxes. The poem made her cry, and another tax preparer told me, ” You have a gift! I don’t know if you know that, but you do.” That was the first time I realized that I could affect people with my poems and that I was gifted to do this.

Around 2011 and 2012 I started attending various open mics in Louisville, Ky and getting my name out there. I performed under the moniker of KennyFresh, a nickname that an old high school classmate gave me in 2010 when we used to write poems via Notes on Facebook. I did a lot of free opportunities until people started offering to pay me to come perform for their organizations. I believe that the instant I first received payment for my services was the day I became a creative entrepreneur and a business.

Although I’ve been performing for years, I made my brand, Refresherpoint, an LLC in February of 2020. My business continues to evolve as I use poetry to meet my clients’ needs. Everything I do has come from the question, ” Do you do…..?” I write custom poems for clients for their businesses or special occasions (no weddings or relationship poems), I conduct poetry writing workshops for youth and children, and of course, conduct poetry performances. There’s probably some other need that my poetry can help fill that I haven’t been asked yet, but I’m ready for it. That’s the beauty of my business, poetry is creative writing and what business doesn’t need a creative writer? I love using words to help solve problems and tell stories.

I’ve partnered with a lot of organizations over the years and done some amazing things like: had a poem published in a book encouraging teenagers to read, filmed a poem in Louisville that was aired in Athens, Greece, had a poem sandblasted into the concrete, did a short project called 2892 Miles To Go which was powered by National Geographic, spent a week in the Twin Cities performing poetry and photography for a non-profit, various television appearances and so much more! If there’s one thing I want folks to take away from my work is that I strive to use poetry to speak to peoples’ pain and inject hope. Language can be used to help heal and I think that poetry can be an active agent of change and healing.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Being an artist/creative entrepreneur is a hard journey and resilience is par for the course in this lane. In 2021, I realized that my book could be purchased by libraries, so I set out to reach out to as many libraries as possible. To that end, I emailed EVERY library in every county in Indiana and every state in the Midwest! Indiana has 92 counties; Kentucky is part of the South and not the Midwest but I still emailed all 120 counties. Ohio has 88 counties and so on and so forth. Out of the hundreds, if not couple of thousands, of libraries I emailed, less than 100 responded. A few said they weren’t interested, but there were a few who were. Every library that carries my book is a result of me reaching out to them, and that’s how it is for most of my performance opportunities. I’ve learned through the years that you have to push through thousands of no’s to get a single “yes.” You have to develop extremely thick skin to make it in this industry, and this story is just one of many that I believe highlights my resilience.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson I had to unlearn is a very important one: Don’t be afraid to charge for your goods and services!! When I first started out, I had a very stupid rule that I cringe to even think about. Even more so because I said it in on one of my first interviews. It took me a few years to wrap my mind around this fact: non-profit organizations actually do have money! In the beginning I used to not charge churches or non-profit organizations. I thought the title “non-profit” literally meant that these organizations didn’t make any money. I was very ignorant to the way some of these entities operate and how their payment structures worked. I think a lot of creatives go through this thing where they feel almost guilty for charging folks to do what they love.

One of the things that helped me break out was a talk with fellow creative Brent Barnett, who gave me this gem to help me: “If the caterer is getting paid, then you should be getting paid.” It took a few years and observing different organizations to realize that we as artists have to charge what we believe we are worth and let the chips fall where they may. Over the years I learned to believe that if everyone else could eat off an artist’s skills, the artist should be able to eat as well.

One thing that changed my mind is getting to peek behind certain curtains and seeing how much money these organizations were making and juxtaposing that with the fact that they “couldn’t afford” me. To be fair, there’s some organizations who do great work and really don’t have the funds. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the folks with a big building, staff, and their CEO who makes a couple of hundred thousand a year. For all my artists: Before you start working with some of these non-profits, make sure you look at their GuideStar profiles or their financial reports. 501(c)(3) entities are required by law to be open books with regards to finances. Check to see how much they bring in and how much goes to programming (most creatives get paid from that programming budget) and see how much programming they actually do.

In this business, folks don’t like to talk about money and the artists are the ones suffering for it. If you live in a city with a thriving art scene that brings in millions if not billions a year, there’s no reason why a lot of that money shouldn’t make its way into artists’ pockets. Charge what you’re worth, meet folks in the middle if you can, and have faith enough to walk away if the offer feels more exploitive than beneficial. There’s more out there for you, you don’t have to accept any and everything.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.refresherpoint.com
• Instagram: facebook.com/refresherpoint
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/refresherpoint
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/kennyfresh1025
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@refresherpoint

Image Credits
Photos taken by Denisha McCauley-Young and Marlesha Woods