Kyla Denanyoh: Reinventing Success After Failing the Bar
Episode Summary
Kyla Denanyoh is a lawyer, storyteller, and founder of KD Creative, a multimedia agency that helps small business owners amplify their voice through podcasting. In this episode, Kyla shares her winding path through law school, bar exam setbacks, and eventual transition into entrepreneurship. Her story is one of resilience, reinvention, and radical self-trust; an empowering reminder that success doesn’t always follow the traditional route. Whether you're navigating a pivot, recovering from a setback, or redefining what success means to you, Kyla's journey will leave you inspired.
Key Takeaways:
Why your bar exam results don’t define your worth or your future
How to reclaim your gifts after burnout or misalignment
The mindset shift that helped Kyla stop hiding her legal background and start using it differently
A simple exercise Kyla used to build confidence (and finally launch her podcast)
What it really looks like to build a business rooted in authenticity, not approval
Meet Kyla Denanyoh
Kyla Denanyoh is the founder of KD Creative, a podcast production agency that helps small business owners show up, speak clearly, and get visible. She’s also the host of You Are A Lawyer, a podcast highlighting the real stories of lawyers doing meaningful work beyond the courtroom. With a background in law and a gift for storytelling, Kyla uses creativity to make entrepreneurship feel more human and more possible, for herself and her clients.
How She Pivoted
After graduating law school, Kyla Denanyoh expected to follow the traditional path: pass the bar, become a lawyer, and work her way up. But when she didn’t pass the bar (twice), everything she thought she knew about success started to unravel. She found herself hiding her education, taking basement jobs in law firms, and feeling like she’d failed. But little by little, she started to realise: she hadn’t failed, she was just meant to build something different.
“It took therapy. It took affirmations. I used to sit in the mirror and say, ‘You are a lawyer. You are a lawyer.’ Over and over. Because I had to believe it before I could build from it,” shared Kyla Denanyoh on episode 27 of the Rhonda Coleman Wandel podcast.
Kyla eventually launched her own creative agency and her own voice. Through podcasting, entrepreneurship, and years of unlearning what success was supposed to look like, she built a business that reflects her strengths and her story.
Insights for Ambitious Women
Kyla’s journey shows how important it is to stop waiting for permission and start trusting your instincts. From working in church leadership to building paralegal teams and producing over 200 podcast episodes, she discovered her real power was never in a title; it was in her ability to lead, communicate, and connect.
“You wouldn’t keep thinking about it if you weren’t ready to do it. Stop negotiating with yourself and just start,” encouraged Kyla Denanyoh on the RCW podcast.
For any woman stuck between potential and permission, this episode is a blueprint. Kyla proves that reinvention isn’t about scrapping everything. It’s about building on what you’ve already learned in a new way.
Listen Now
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