Martin 

So tell me what were you doing before? Becoming a relationship coach and a therapist would love to hear that.

Briana 

Sure. Well, so I went straight from art school to graduate school to become an art therapist. So I was always kind of headed in that direction. I got married and had a child and I took time off of work to raise my child. And in that time, my marriage basically fell apart. And…

I just realized that my husband and I were better friends than we were lovers and partners. And so I had this kind of like come to God moment where it was sort of like everything about who I was and my identity and everything I wanted to do was called into question. And so for a few years, I took a job as kind of a glorified intake coordinator working for a company called the Amen Clinics. And I ended up learning a lot about it as a brain research and diagnostic facility. I ended up learning a lot about

The brain and how it affects the way we show up in relationships. But I was really kind of flying below the radar and I decided I wanted to be a romance writer. I was like, screw with being a therapist. I’m going to be a romance writer. And I actually wrote five award-winning unpublished works in the realms of paranormal romance.

Something would always happen like an editor would pick it up, but then they leave their job or something always happened and I could never get something ultimately published and so.

I was kind of spinning my wheels for a while and then the Amen Clinics restructured and basically offered me a job as a therapist. And I was still like, no, I don’t want to be a therapist, even though I had all the credentials. And so I decided that, and they weren’t going to pay me very much. So I decided that the only way I can make money is if I become my own boss, I’m going to start my own practice. And never in my life did I want to be my own boss, never wanted to be in charge of my own money. But I was like, I have to do it. So I said, I gave myself nine months.

And I said, either I’m going to make it work in nine months or I’m moving to Florida, where it’s a lot cheaper to live than Manhattan. And I’m just going to work in a bookstore for the rest of my life. So I gave myself nine months. And in that time, I did manage to find a studio, an art studio where I could do my practice. And I was still sort of holding on to the dream of becoming a romance writer. And so I went to this conference in Chicago.

And in the meantime, I had gone through a breakup with someone and a miscarriage with someone, which really rocked me to my core emotionally speaking. And at the same time, three of my immediate family members were being confronted with chronic illnesses. And so my attachments were really being called into question and disrupted on a lot of different levels. So there’s all this stuff happening with me professionally speaking. And then there’s all this stuff happening with me romantically and then within my family structure.

So I felt like I had this kind of heart opening experience where I could either succumb to a kind of victim mentality or I could try to find grace on the other side of this experience. So I do what I always do when I’m confronted with things and I dive into it. So I started researching attachment and I started researching grief and my education as a therapist guided me in those directions.

And I just started writing about it. I’d write blog posts about it. I was, and this was long before like YouTube or Twitter or any of those things that we took off. was like the first few years of YouTube’s inception really. And so I started writing about these things. Then I thought, well, five paranormal romance novels didn’t get published, but maybe a book about grief would. And so I wrote a proposal for a contributed volume about grief and I got,

several other practitioners were willing to contribute to it and within a week of submitting the proposal the publisher was like yes we’ll print it. And so I’m in an airport on my way to go to Chicago to give a presentation on credible character conflict to an audience of romance writers and I get a call from the publishing company saying they want to publish my book about grief so I’m going to talk about love and I’m getting published in the realms of grief.

And so I go and I give my presentation about credible character conflict to the romance writers and I got a standing ovation. And it was another, I call them universal links, but that morning the three other courses that were going on at the conference got canceled because it was like a big weather storm or something. They couldn’t make it to the hotel. So I wound up having triple the amount of people in the room that were intended to be there. So I got a lot of exposure and I got a standing ovation for my presentation and a woman came up to me afterwards.

And she says, do you have an online course? And a light bulb goes on over my head. And I said, not yet, but give me your email, and I’ll let you know when I do. And so I collected the emails of everyone in that conference room. And I went home. And I’m like, maybe this is a way to go rather than scrimping and saving and trying to figure out how to get more than three private clients on my caseload. Because remember, I’ve got nine months to make this work.

I put together that whole presentation I did that got the standing ovation. I turned it into an online course. I just duct taped things I could learn from a Google search and free resources and put something together on Teachable. And then I sent an email to them, look, now the presentation’s online and crickets, nobody bought it. And I thought, well, I guess that’s not the direction I’m going to go in. So I kept sort of slogging along for another couple of months. I’m like, man, the timer’s counting down.

And then I had a friend ask me if they could borrow my study materials for the licensing exam that art therapists have to take in New York. And I said, sure. And I thought, my study materials had done the rounds with my friends and colleagues. Like, why not just turn those into an online course? So I took all my study materials, and then I put those on Teachable. And then I just advertised it to a few local listservs.

And so more time goes by, a month or two goes by, and it’s getting, you know, I’m just like, man, I’m really struggling here financially. And I’m sick of where I’m working. I’m meeting with three clients a week in a yoga studio where I have to set up and break down after each hour, because it’s a rent by the hour office. And as an art therapist, like you want a studio, you want an art studio to work with your clients. So an opportunity came up, a block from where I was already working, where an art studio was available.

and it was $750 a month to occupy it for, I think it was like two and a half days a week. And so I saw it, I loved it. I said, yes, I want it. And then I cried the whole way home because I’m like, I can barely afford my rent. I’ve only got like six months left to make this work. And I just agreed to pay for $750, which is two thirds of my rent as it stands. And I also have to pay them a security deposit of $750. What am I thinking? So I wind up.

So all this stuff is going on in the background. People are buying the online course for study materials. So that starts working. And this is kind of chugging in the background. And out of the blue, like five days before I’m supposed to sign the lease, and of course I’m conflict avoidant, so I’m twisted about it because I’m going to have to tell her, no, I can’t sign the lease. A friend of mine, a mutual friend of mine and my ex-husband’s, sees a painting in his apartment and asks me if she can buy it. And so I’m like, she’s like, how much do you want for it? And I’m like,

$750. And so she’s done. She bought my painting for $750. I had never sold a painting before in my life. Had plenty of paintings, never sold one. She buys it for $750. And I’m like, okay, okay. I’ve got five days to get the security, I get the first month. That security was the first month. So I did one thing I said I would never do and I asked my mom for money. And she said what I always knew she would say. And that was no. But then the time comes along.

And the reason I say that is because I think I opened something up energetically speaking just by doing the thing I never wanted to do and asking for help. My mom wasn’t the one who showed up, but the universe ultimately did because like a day before I’m supposed to sign that lease, the online school on Teachable paid out what I had earned for the study materials and it was exactly $750.

So I had the first months and I had security. So I got into the art studio and I’m like, okay, I’ve got the three clients that I had picked up in the yoga studio. Now I’ve got a real art studio. I don’t know how I’m gonna make next month’s rent for the office, let alone my home, but I believe it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna come. And it did. I did. I wound up building out my practice. And at the same time, the online stuff started growing and more people heard about my study materials and started buying them.

And so my practice is growing and people are buying the online course. Nobody bought the character, the credible character conflict course, but people were buying continuing education. So I was like, you know, at that point I had been a therapist in practice for six or seven years and I had a lot of like group curriculums. So group therapy curriculums. And I thought these are basically just online courses for other therapists. So I formatted them that way. And that winter,

The winter after all this happened, New York State passed a law requiring therapists to have 36 hours of continuing education credit every 36 months, every three years. And man, they were pissed about it. Nobody wanted to do it. Nobody wanted to be regulated. And I was like, cha-ching. So I took all of my curriculums, turned them into continuing education courses. And by the time January rolled around, I was the only one ready and prepared to offer something.

Briana 

And there was a lot of demand. so it was like, I’ve arrived, I’ve landed. And I was ready for this to happen. And there was no way I could have known that would have happened. So I was kind of off and running. And that was when I started shifting my focus from private practice to the online space and becoming more of an online educator. So I was doing a lot more like continuing education for licensed creative arts therapists and licensed mental health counselors in New York state.

Briana

But then that went on for about a year or so and then everyone caught on. So now my income starts going down again. And I’m like, there’s gotta be a better way to do this. And I don’t need to just, you know, reach out directly to therapists. Why am I not just reaching out directly to clients? Like, why not just educate people about their own struggles? And I was kind of wobbling a little bit during that time because I had written a book about grief.

Martin

Mm-hmm.

Briana 

By that point, I then wrote a second book about attachment and working with the LGBTQ AI community. I was taught working with people around addictions. So I didn’t have a focus, you know, just like, well, I educate everybody about everything. But that was not really a scalable business model. And so I

was plugging along and making these courses. And I was sort of in this place where I’m like, where do I go next? If I want to work with people directly, what am I going to offer them? What am I going to focus on? Who’s my avatar? And in the meantime, I’m also working on outdated computer equipment. And I’m making these continuing education videos, but I know that my computer is going to die. So I’m like, there’s got to be a way to save these things online. And someone suggested, well, why don’t you just load them up to YouTube?

And I knew nothing about YouTube at the time. but I did realize that you could load your videos up to this online thing for free and they would store them. And I’m like, are they crazy? That’s a terrible business model, but okay. So I loaded up my videos mostly about attachment. I was doing a course on attachment and I didn’t know you could privatize them. I didn’t know you could make them unlisted. I didn’t know anything. And I thought, who cares anyway? No one’s paying attention to me. And so I loaded up all these videos about attachment and I walked away from it.

And then I came back to it like two or three months later and I had 2000 followers. And I was like, what? These were private. How did people see this without any effort from me? And I thought that’s another wink from the universe. I’m going to talk about attachment. And it kind of made sense because that standing ovation had been a presentation about credible character conflict and how attachment affects relationships. So I thought, so I guess I’m going to talk about love after all.

so I started talking about attachment and I just went full hog and focused on that. And I built my YouTube channel and. I started doing it intentionally and things just grew. And over time, I just migrated entirely. I entirely migrated online in 2019, which was just before COVID in 2020. And that, and then my business tripled overnight. but each sort of turning point, I would say I was.

set up for it. Like I was, I’ve always been right where I need to be just before something happens beyond my control. So I’ve been, I feel like I’ve been guided in many ways intuitively speaking.

Martin 

Hmm. Yeah, a couple of, as you said, winks from the universe there along the way, which is quite cool. All those different points where it was, the pressure was building up and then, I mean, it’s fascinating that you took your business online in 2019, right before COVID. Most people I speak to on this podcast, that sort of hit them and then they had to pivot and adjust to it. sounds like you were just.

I almost anticipated it was gonna happen. So, you know, good for you. That’s really great. So tell us today how the offerings that you’re currently putting out there are all of your content still mainly focused around attachment. What are the offerings that you have and how have they been over the last couple of years since COVID as you said, your business tripled in that time. But have you noticed any changes since then? Where are things today?

Briana 

Yeah. So there are three sorts of branches of things that I offer. The attachment course is the largest one. So I have at this time.

I believe I have six-course offerings on my website for front-facing traffic. People who get into my world, get offers for other things along the way. But mostly those offerings are divided into the realms of communication. So how do we apply an understanding of your attachment style to how we utilize communication and relationships, understanding that communication is a vehicle for healing? So it’s not just about negotiating our needs. It’s also about

How are we using our words to heal deep, profound emotional wounds that we carry? So I also tend to approach these things from within a spiritual perspective. So I believe that our relationships are containers for spiritual growth and expansion, whether we come together to catalyze our own spiritual growth or we come together to be

to create a container in which we grow together. So communication becomes a tool with which we are affecting that growth and expansion. The other category is just looking at spiritual healing on the level of inner child work. looking at, because sometimes there’s the level of attachment and security where if you can change a few things about the way you’re communicating and the way you’re showing up to the relationship, then the insecurity kind of eases and we’re able to let it flow.

There’s usually more protective factors in a person’s life, if that’s the case. If it’s just taking a few tweaks and things work, then there are probably some considerable protective factors in that person’s life. If we have someone who’s experienced significant and severe trauma, the 

most secure, loving, ideal person could show up at their door. And now it’s not a problem of arranging the environments, curating your environments to make good, discerning choices. You’ve made a good choice. Now it is, you gotta let it in.

And this is where we have those internal barriers to embracing the abundance that we’ve attracted in our lives, whether it is romantic, financial, physical, and health-wise, all the categories. But in my case, I talk about this more through the lens of relationship. And so the spiritual healing courses are really for those folks who are like, I’ve got the love and I can’t let it in.

or I struggle to believe I’m worthy of it without having to work hard for it. And so working hard creates this distance between themselves and their intrinsic value. And that distance becomes mirrored in every subsequent relationship they have, where either they’re keeping themselves apart from someone else or that person’s keeping them apart. And so that distance gets mirrored in a variety of different ways and contexts. So those programs are really about closing that gap so that

we recognize the transcendent love that exists within all of us. The other two sort of branches are, I still have my continuing ed school, so I still work with practitioners in New York state providing continuing education. And then I also now have offerings for other practitioners, therapists, coaches, and healers to start building their online offerings, let’s say. So those are some things, those are really more like,

intimate projects, you know, those are things people I usually get really close with those individuals because I want to pass on some of what I’ve learned so that other people in my space can evolve into the space because for therapists and practitioners, especially there can be a culture of there’s this worthiness culture as well. Like, I feel like I can’t

charge for my services because what I’m offering is, you know, a human service and people should be entitled to my skills and to what I offer without having to pay for it, right? But no one says that they’re entitled to a surgery and no one denies the salaries that doctors get. And yet we could argue that they are much more entitled to that because it means the difference between life and death. So why is it that we as

Martin 

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Briana 

as therapists or practitioners feel that our work is devalued and it’s because it’s connected to emotions and you know we have this societal historical patriarchal system that downplays emotions as being informative or productive or anything else and so there’s this this thing that we’ve got inside of us where we’re not advocating for our value or our worth so this is a sort of third

a couple of offerings that I have for other practitioners and challenging those things. But my primary focus remains with attachment. And you asked me another question. Can you remind me?

Martin 

Yeah, I just asked you how things have evolved over the last couple of years since COVID with your current course offerings.

Briana 

Sure. So COVID, I don’t mean to be flippant, but COVID was a boon for me because everyone was at home, everyone was in tight quarters with their partners and they were driving each other crazy and they had nothing to do but go online. And so I had a course about how to deal with the person that’s driving you crazy online. So, you know, it really served my business well. It also, I think,

created a massive acceleration in market sophistication, at least in terms of in the dating and relationship space. I mean, when I started, attachment styles were like a new idea. And literally within three years, everyone in casual conversation has at least heard of attachment styles and has a sense of what theirs might be, which is phenomenal. mean, that has such a service to humanity. I can’t even tell you. But as a marketer who’s making her money off of teaching people about attachment styles, it means now you’ve got to

you’ve got to find a new way of talking about it and you have to stay relevant. And my revenues did go down. They went down considerably in 2022. I started to see that downward trend and I was kind of in denial. And then at the end of 2022, beginning of 2023, revenues took a long leap off a short cliff. And so I was like, man. So I had to start.

looking at different platforms. Instagram exploded. Instagram exploded on the scene, especially with being able to automate engagement with Many chat. Brilliant. And so I had been kind of ignoring Instagram. It was just sort of like the offshoot of things. And then I was mostly focusing on Facebook and YouTube. And then Facebook knocked me on my ass because they disabled my account with changes to their algorithm because the account said that I was

violating their advertising policies because they have strict policies around things like mental health and stigmatizing people and so on and so forth, which is great, but the algorithm was very sensitive. And so I wasn’t breaking any of those rules, but it thought I was. And so there were delays in getting my business up and running. And it just made me realize how reliant I was upon paid advertising in these outlets. And the same thing with YouTube. Google told me I couldn’t retarget people anymore because I was violating advertising policies, but I wasn’t.

Briana 

And so I kind of kept having to fight them and find someone to talk to to fix it and just became cumbersome. So I actually in around 2023, September of 2023, I eliminated all paid advertising and I was kind of right back to where I started. And I was like in nine months, if this business does not start working again, I’m because I was paying 12 grand a month in paid advertising. And then I cut it all off. And I said, I’m going to have taken out a couple of loans. I’m going to ride this wave. And so I

put my nose to the grindstone with organic traffic strategies with social media and search engine optimization. And by the time May rolled around, I was back to where I was, and I’m better, without any paid advertising. So Instagram, I would say, was a huge part of that. I knuckled down on YouTube again.

And a big part of that too was giving myself permission to talk about attachment in the way that I wanted to talk about it, which was through a spiritual lens. And I didn’t want to talk about it in a psychological context anymore because personally I’ve evolved out of that. And I also feel like because of the market sophistication out there, people know the psychological reasons. Now they’re like, but what does it mean in the greater context of my life? So now I know what my attachment style is and I can see these patterns, but what do I do with that?

What does that mean? How does that make meaning, how does it help me make meaning of my experience? And so that’s kind of where I found the sweet spot. And that’s where I’m really having a lot of fun hanging out right now.

Martin 

That’s awesome. That’s such a really strong shift that you made because I can imagine that was quite confronting the, you know, relying or basically getting to that point of just doing a lot of advertising and realizing, this is a, I’m sure it served you quite well for quite a while. If you were spending that budget per month and then getting to the point where, yeah, I understand.

The sensitivity from Meta and Google on their ad policies, particularly in your field. So it’s not uncommon to hear these stories of accounts getting disabled and ads getting disrupted, which can be really stressful for a business owner, particularly if it is one of her channels that’s working well for you. And it’s always that feeling of like, hey, I’m trying to spend more money with you Meta, like, please let me spend more money on ads with you. And then sort of…

feeling like it’s incredibly vague and it’s quite difficult to deal with their customer support as well. It’s really cool. I would love to understand what you do? You said you went back to the organic roots, but just a little bit more.

specifically there on like, what did you start doing? Were you focusing on longer form content on YouTube? Did you start putting out more email content? What was your Instagram strategy? And also just on the end of that, what’s working well for you at the moment in 2024 on the organic front?

Briana 

Sure. So I guess, I don’t know if I may be making this term up or I may have pulled it from someone, but this concept of domino content. basically

Every month, my strategy starts by writing two blog posts that are thoroughly researched in search engine keywords and search engine optimization. Then I take those and I reformat them into YouTube scripts. And then I’ll search in YouTube for my competitors and to see what were the viral posts that my competitors put out in the last month or so. And then I’ll find a title or a topic that I think is close enough to what I have found in

connects to my scripts. And then I will make four video scripts per month based on those two blog posts. Then I’ll pull clips from those videos for, you know, shorts, whether it’s on YouTube shorts, Instagram or TikTok. And then that’s kind of like the foundation of the content I’ll create. And then on top of that, I will look at varying my, the rhythm of the content by looking at trends. So in my niche,

Like therapists talking to clients is a trend. Just dancing with, now, slamming some text on the screen is kind of a trend. So in a week, I’ll have a talking clip with, you know, fancy editing, therapists talking to clients, me dancing with a catchy, you know, text on the screen. And then on Instagram, carousels have been my highest performers.

Briana 

By far. So I’ll usually try to post at least one or two carousels per week. And then my stories just become an extension of whatever it is that I’m posting in terms of Instagram. The shorts will wind up on YouTube. So then the YouTube shorts direct people back to the videos that I created throughout the month. And I will say also, I’m very intentional with the way I structure my scripts. So my scripts are a lot more direct. So I’ll start with

obviously problem awareness, what are the myths you’re believing about this problem, what’s the truth, and here let me show you the impact of changing your perspective. And I’ll use it, I have a ton of video testimonials. So then at the end of my videos, I’ll have a video testimonial and I’ll explain how and why they got to that result. And if they want to get that result, here’s where they can go to learn more. So I’ve been a lot more tight in the optimization of my funnels starting to end on across.

all of my social platforms, including Instagram, every carousel will end with a video testimonial and a call to where they can get the same result. And on Facebook, so Facebook is where I have my community. So I have a private Facebook community that’s a free free group that’s got almost 30,000 people. And then the student Facebook community is much smaller. That’s like $3,000, $3,000.

3,000 subscribers in that group. So Facebook kind of houses my communities at this time. I’m not really using it so much for advertising anymore, although I am planning on revisiting it. But I do have a page and whatever I post to Instagram or to YouTube shorts will wind up on that page. TikTok is honestly an afterthought, primarily because they don’t automate engagement and

Briana 

You have to always say, check out the link in my bio. I find that even though I can get more views faster on TikTok, I don’t see the same level of engagement. And I don’t see any sales coming in through TikTok. And I did investigate the options for setting up a TikTok shop, but it’s really only for products like e-commerce. It does not lend itself to informational products. Neither does YouTube, by the way.

Briana 

So I don’t have a YouTube shop either. I just tell people to click the cards that you can insert in the videos. So for me, if I were to say what is the platform that I’m mostly focused on right now and considering that my offerings are informational products, Instagram is where it’s at for sure.

Martin 

Yeah, that’s really cool. You mentioned many chat  there as a big part of your strategy as well. Are you able to touch a little bit on what you’re doing there? Are you sort of taking them through a long sequence after, or is it more just delivering the piece of content that they requested? How far does that go?

Briana 

So I’ve experimented with a couple of different strategies. We did have some automated sequences where people would opt into something. We’d wait a little while. Hey, did you like it? Or we’d wait to see if they clicked on it. Hey, notice you didn’t click on it. Here it is again. And then triggering a conversation so that we can follow up in the conversation. And some of that worked, but I really just found that most of the people ignored it. So I’m usually using it in the simplest way.

way possible. just kind of in the mindset of simple is better. So basically I will, they’ll do a keyword, we’ll send them a link. And then when they click on that link, I just try to make sure that whatever they land on is optimized to the best possible way it can be for conversions, whatever that action is that they’re taking. I use Instagram to drive people to YouTube. So for example, if I, if I know I did a really good video that

ends with a video testimony and a call to action. Then on Instagram, I’ll post a carousel, which I know will perform well. And then the key term will send them to many chat, which sends them to the video, which inspires them to buy my product. So there’s a lot of cross pollination going on. the call to actions are not always click on the sales page. Sometimes it’s like, click on this thing I know you want. In my community, scripts are something that perform really high.

Martin 

Wow. Yep. Yep.

Briana 

As well or like little quizzes, things like that. And video and short, yeah. So I teach people about communication. if people want help, like how do I break the silence with someone who’s been stonewalling me? What are five texts I can send to someone who’s during a no contact period, right? How can I ask for space without offending my anxious partner?

Martin 

What do you mean by those?

Briana 

How can I ask for more connection without offending my avoidant partner? So those things perform really well on my platform. Yeah.

Martin 

That’s cool, that’s cool. And that’s a lot of content that you’re doing. How much, if you can answer, roughly how long does that take you per week? How involved are you? Are you also doing all the editing for those? Have you got team members that are helping you on that? We’d love to just understand a little bit more. How much time and effort that takes you and how much you’re also delegating as well.

Briana

Yeah, I’m really a one woman show. have a VA who assists me with my emails and issuing things like refunds. And she also does my books. And then I have another VA who answers people in our incoming messages on Instagram and on ManyChat.

And we schedule the Facebook group content together. So she sort of manages that. And she will attend any live presentations I do. She attends to be a support person and then she organizes, you know, where all that’s supposed to go. But other than that, I do all the SEO research, I do all the writing, I do all the editing, I do all the things, all the emails, all the above.

Martin 

That’s amazing.

Briana 

But yes, I have recently decided I would hire a couple people to help me with my YouTube editing. So I’ve got Abu and Safran working for me right now doing some YouTube editing. So we’re giving it a trial run.

Martin

Cool, and where is ChatGBT fitting into your content creation these days? Is it at all or?

Briana 

ChatGP, I’m sorry, there’s three people I work with and ChatGPT is the third. It has 10x my productivity. I could not be a one-woman show without ChatGPT. ChatGPT, love you! Shout out! Yeah, and it’s funny, Brock, I don’t know if you are familiar, Brock Johnson’s like an Instagram.

Briana

Personality character and he put out a prompt recently saying, I didn’t know chat GPT could make me cry, but here we are. And it’s a prompt where you basically ask chat GPT to tell you about its impression of you and your strengths and whatnot. And so I typed this prompt in to chat GPT and it spit out the most heartfelt love letter to me. And I was like, this is scary and also wonderful. But yes.

Martin 

Yes. Yeah.

Briana 

To answer your question, it is an integral part of my business.

Martin 

Yeah, absolutely. It’s incredible. Like every day or every week, there’s a new discovery with where it fits in and it just feels so nice sometimes to just cut that three hour task down to 15 minutes. Yeah, no, it’s incredible. So I’m glad to hear that you’ve got that third person on your team. So that’s really, really great to hear.

Where are you next? What’s next on the plan for the business? Is there a particular new project that you’re working on or is it more of, know, keep the content running, keep the existing offers running? What else was in the mix for you these days?

Briana 

So my time, like Mondays and Tuesdays, I call my consultation days. So those are days that I meet with clients privately who opt in to meet with me and speak with me one to one. So I’m kind of keeping that space because it keeps me honest and it also keeps me abreast of what people are going through. And then the second part of the week is usually doing all the things that it takes to create that much content on a regular basis. But

I usually run live group coaching programs as well. we’re entering into a new cycle. We have an enrollment period now for a course for anxious attachment and healing the rescuer in love. But my passion is really the evergreen model and just to have to have offers being shared asynchronously and then and then doing usually I do three live launches a year. But my passion at the moment is writing a book.  I’m working with an editor too. I’ve published two books, but they were really more textbooks and they were really geared to practitioners. And so now I’m really working on a book. That is, I feel like the culmination of the work that I’ve been doing in this space for the past 10 years. And it’s going to be called Hungry Love. And it’s going to be speaking about attachment from this new perspective that I’ve been enjoying working with and just keeping our fingers crossed that it gets picked up. So that’s where I’m at right now for new projects.

Martin 

sure it will. I’m sure there’ll be a lovely wink from the universe at that next point for you. Can you talk a little bit more? it more on the, as you said, the attachment from a spiritual perspective? Is it more down that path? Like, feel free to share a little bit more about it. Yeah.

Briana 

You , yeah, Sure. So the book’s going to be called Hungry Love and it is 12 steps for overachievers to embrace soul-centered security in their lives using art therapy techniques.

Martin 

Okay, How much is like, so art therapy is still the main one on one therapy that you’re doing at the moment. And is that, virtually or do you did you because I missed that part, did you or it’s all virtual at the moment.

Briana

Yeah. Yeah, everything’s virtual. Yeah, so art therapy it’s basically using your creative spirit to work with the issues that you’re confronting. Because when we’re talking, we’re using a very particular part of the brain, and it’s a part of the brain that is often highly defended.

Martin 

Okay.

Briana

And a lot of times people who struggle with insecure attachment use their intellect, at least, and I work primarily with professionals and high achievers. And so they have adopted powerful strengths and coping skills that allowed them to succeed and thrive in their careers. But because those strengths stem from early attachment wounding, there’s this perception that I’ve overcome that. It didn’t affect me. But the energetic source,their strength still comes from that wound. And the pride that they feel about the strength coming from the wound keeps the wound in operation. And so a lot of the work that I do and a lot of what the book is about is recognizing when that’s going on and how that’s going on, recognizing the fear and the resistance we have to changing it because we’re afraid it means we won’t be successful and we’re going to lose our identity if we do.

Briana 

So grieving that, letting go of that, surrendering that, and then realizing I don’t need to lose my strengths. I don’t need to change who I fundamentally am. I’m just going to source that from a different place. And I call that soul-centered security, meaning you’re sourcing it from the essence of your being. You’re sourcing it from your spiritual self, the part of you that is informed by compassion, curiosity, creativity, cooperation, collaboration.

The part of yourself that can look at your life from a moon’s eye view and see and understand all the gifts that are inherent within it, even the wounds that you may carry. So this is really what the book is about. And that’s kind of the nuance that we get into there. And that’s why I call it soul-centered security, because going back to what I mentioned before, like the perfect partner could show up at your door. But if you’re not centered, you won’t be able to let it in.

And so if we can orient our sense of agency, esteem, worth, value towards the transcendent part of ourselves, then we can go into any situation and make discerning choices about it and feel more secure and understanding where we are in relationship to others.

Martin 

Yeah, really cool. Really, really powerful message there. And hopefully that all continues to go really well for you. And as you said, on track to get published, wish you the best for that. That’s really, really cool work that you’re doing. So Briana, thank you so much for coming on and sharing everything about your personal journey, the business. Really, really interesting. I love understanding a little bit more of that. Yeah, those tough moments that you face and how you pivoted and found the next, you know, always adapting to those challenges that you face and you deserve all the success that you’ve got at the moment. So congratulations and yeah, thanks for sharing everything with us today and being on the show. Appreciate it.

Briana 

Thank you, I appreciate it. It was a fun conversation.