 I'm really happy to be here with Kaley Larkin. So the reason for this interview is because one of my viewers, maybe you're watching this right now, asked me, George, can you talk about attachment styles and how they relate to business and marketing? And the first person I thought of right away, oh, attachment styles. I know someone who's an expert in that, Kaley Larkin. So that's why we're here. I have heard about attachment styles, Kaley, for a long time, I think, just off and on. But I never studied it, and I figured, well, why not ask someone who has been working with a lot of clients with attachment, you know, in this area. So Kaley, welcome to this interview. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this will be enlightening for myself and many others here. Maybe you could start with formally introducing yourself. Sure. Hi, I'm Kaley. So glad to be here. Thank you so much, George, for having me on. And yes, so I am a love and attachment coach. I help people who are struggling with attachment dynamics and their relationships to develop a relationship with more ease and security and deep connection. And so very passionate about what I do and super excited to be talking about it in a different context today with George. So yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Speaking of attachment, I'm right now attached to my bed because I'm bedwritten right now with an infected foot. This is day four. I think it's getting better very gradually. I'm on antibiotics as well. But I am really happy to be here. I'm lucid. I just can't work at my usual desk, so apologies, everyone, for a different than strange background today. All right. Well, it's a testament for how you show up for people that you're here, George. Yeah, thank you. I'm probably a little too attached to making sure I don't cancel on things. Maybe sometimes I should, but I was looking forward to this anyway. Okay. So let's start with the basics. Some people watching this have probably, you know, they know about this, but just review it from your perspective. What are the attachment styles? Great. Okay. So there's four attachment styles and you may hear slightly different names around them, but the names that I'll be using are secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. And these attachment styles, we all have them. So every single one of us has an attachment style. Something that we might talk about is that we actually have more than one. We are a blend and that can come up for people in different ways. But just keep things simple right now. The different attachment styles, which are anxious. So anxious attachment is, it comes from a background where someone, excuse me for a second, I mean, Georgia, we may need to edit this part out. A little bit of a frog in my throat this morning, so we're both a little bit. No, you're good. All right. Go ahead. Okay. So the first style we'll talk about is anxious attachment style. Anxious attachment style develops. These all develop when we're super young and we get this attachment style that develops between us and our primary caregivers. When we're very, very young, some people even say in the womb. And it kind of has to do with the dynamics that happen early on. And these dynamics that happen, they can be back forth, push, pull, how attentive someone is, how consistent they are. These kinds of dynamics develop our attachment system and we carry this into our adult relationships. It's very fascinating. So the anxious attachment style, for example, they didn't get this background of consistency and reliability. So in their adult relationships, they're constantly wanting this feeling of consistency and reliability and they're seeking out, like so often happens in life, right? George, like we're looking for the things we didn't get. So they're trying to get that consistency from their partner that reassurance. They want to know the relationship's okay, everything's okay. They like a lot of external reassurance. They like a lot of external validation that feels really good to them. Now for the avoidant attachment style, they had a different experience. So they may not have felt seen or felt met in a deep emotional way. So perhaps their caregiver was consistent. They came attentively as far as getting them fed and all the things that we need when we're very young. However, they may not have felt that deep connection or they may just not have felt it frequently enough. And so as a result, they learned to kind of give that to themselves. They became very independent, very self-sufficient, and they lean a lot on that self-sufficiency in their adult relationships. So for example, someone with an avoidant attachment, one example that I like to use is say people are going on a vacation together. So say a couple's going on a vacation together and people have different expectations and different feelings about vacations. So for someone who's more anxiously attached, they might be excited about spending time with their partner. They're like, woohoo, this is a chance for us to get to know each other better and get deeper. Maybe our relationship will get closer. And they're feeling a lot of kind of excitement about the closeness about spending time with their partner. For someone who has avoidant attachment style, they're thinking about, OK, let's plan this. Let's figure out what we're going to do. And they're thinking, OK, let's divvy up tasks. Let's make sure that everyone's kind of doing their part. And they kind of take this stance of we each have our own kind of role in this. And so there's a slightly different approach to how people do different activities. This can show up in all kinds of different ways. So for the anxious person, they have a fairly high tolerance for that closeness. For the avoidant person, maybe not so much. They can get a little stressed out when there's too much approach. And as you can imagine, in a vacation scenario where people are going off together and they're spending a lot of time together, that can cause some friction if those two people happen to be in a relationship together. So there's just like a lot of different ways that this can play out. The vacation example is just one small way in the way that these dynamics can play out in the relationships. And then the last style, actually I haven't talked about secure attachment yet. So secure attachment. Secure attachment, people tend to feel fairly flexible in their approach. They're distancing. They're comfortable with hello's and goodbyes. They feel warm and connected in a relationship. They're able to provide support to their partner, help their partner meet their needs. And they're able to advocate for their own needs. So they have a very balanced way of both making sure that they're okay and making sure their partner's okay. Very team-oriented approach to relationship. And then the fourth style, disorganized attachment. Again, these all have different names. And I know they sound a little bit judgy. Just something to keep in mind. I know the disorganized style. The parents didn't teach the kids about spreadsheets. That's probably them. Yeah, we're going to get the spreadsheets. Actually, spreadsheets are related to all of this. Yes, so disorganized. It can show up in that way. And we can talk about that. But it's called disorganized because they can flip-flop between anxious style and avoidant style. And sometimes they go back and forth between the two. Sometimes they lean more on one side. Like they might lean more towards anxious or lean more towards avoidant. And there's also a fear component that's based in trauma. So the disorganized is like they kind of, they're more, yeah, they have multiple styles working with them. Is that right? Yes, that's absolutely right. Yeah. Now, this is amazing. I mean, I can, so much of my life and relationships is starting to clear up through this conversation. I'm like, oh, okay. No, no wonder. And we all see ourselves in this. It's totally normal. Yeah. Like I said, everyone has an attachment style and usually blends. What's interesting to me, well, the fact that you work with people, I imagine this means people, once they become conscious of their attachment styles and their relationships, they can start to, is it, reparent themselves or something like that? So that can people, you know, basically transition over to a secure attachment style as an adult? So yeah, that's a great question. And there is a common misconception that attachment style is unchangeable. And the fact is, like you're saying that you can make changes with attachment to shift into a more secure attachment style. People do have different attachment styles in different relationships. So someone could be, you know, anxious with a neighbor, secure with their best friend. They could be, you know, mostly secure in their relationship. Occasionally go into anxious, depending on different circumstances and scenarios. So interesting. Yeah, because I noticed myself being, I guess it would be anxious. I mean, I'm part of like a men's WhatsApp group and I'm quite anxious there because I don't get the validation that I'm used to elsewhere. Bunch of guys just don't know how to validate each other. And no, it's not always true, but in this group it is. But yeah, in other groups I'm very comfortable and it all depends. It depends so much on. And so I want to start moving over to talking about business and marketing. And what is, yeah, and you can of course bring up anything else you'd like that you think is important to talk about. But I'm curious, when it comes to like, okay, so there's two scenarios I guess I want to talk about. One is our relationship to clients. And second is our relationship to our quote unquote audience. Sure. And how attachment styles can play into this. So for example, okay, let me, do you have a sense of like, is there, among the popular among the average, whatever that means, average, let's say North American population. Do you work mostly with Americans or? Mostly, yeah. Yeah. So among the people you've worked with, your sense of the North American population, what is there like a prominent prevalence style and yeah, any kind of percentages that you're aware of? Sure. So the research says like around 50% of people are securely attached. But like I said, people are not expected actually. Exactly. It's more than most people would expect when they learn anything about this. And I think it's the reason why that seems odd. It doesn't quite jive with our experience. I mean, for me, it makes sense because I work with lots of people who are coming from an insecure attachment style. But you're also saying that and you're a business coach, you know, you work with solopreneurs. And so, I mean, part of the reason I think is because we don't just have one attachment style. Like we're a blend. So if someone says they're secure, they also have a little bit of anxious, a little bit of avoidant, a little bit of disorganized, probably. Maybe more of some than the other. I describe it like a pizza. You know, a pizza has different toppings. Like you might have a lot of cheese or just a little cheese. Yeah, or a lot of pepperoni. So I think of it like that. I see. OK, so let's talk about our connections with our clients. I mean, you obviously can come from your own experience. Let's say, oh, sorry, 50% secure. And what about the rest of the 50%? Like how many are anxious versus avoidant? Versus avoidant. I don't remember the exact number off the top of my head. I think it's a round balance between anxious and avoidant. Oh, OK. All right. So we could talk about kind of both of these pretty equally. Yeah. What I do remember is the amount of avoidant is actually increasing in the world. The amount of avoidant is going up. Wow. And it also does vary depending on countries. So like countries have higher percentages of avoidant or anxious or disorganized. Yeah, I can imagine that. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, this is kind of broad-based. But I can imagine while I grew up in Taiwan, just the far east, probably more avoidant. I don't know, because a lot less emotions are expressed compared to Americans. And I always think Americans are so expressive. We say, I love you. And it's like, I've never heard my parents say I love you in my life. Like to me, almost never. Yeah, I'm trying to remember back. They're not going to be watching this. But yeah, so thinking about our relationship to our clients and our potential clients, what might anxious or avoidant behave like in a way that's probably not beneficial for their business? Or you can answer the question from the opposite side, is what might a secure attachment style be like as they approach clients and potential clients? Sure. Yeah, so secure is going to, you know how they say, like, how we do one thing in life is how we show up in a lot of other ways? So this is such a great question, because of course it's going to influence how we show up in other ways in our life. And that's one of the misconceptions of attachment. It's like, it only shows up in relationships or romantic relationships. And it doesn't. It shows up everywhere. So what you're asking is about the relationship between like a coach and their client. So for someone who has secure attachment, they tend to show up in their relationships in like a very warm, affirming way. They have good boundaries. They have a good sense of self-worth. So like they're able to kind of maintain those boundaries to give empathy. They're very, they're highly attuned, of course, meaning they can, you know, recognize people's emotions and identify what that means and then respond and adapt accordingly. So all of that is going to play into their interactions with clients. Something that the anxious attachment style, so the strength of the anxious attachment style is they are also very attuned. They tend to be very focused on others due to their fears of abandonment. And so because they're focused on others, that can make them excellent at reading people. It can make them excellent at kind of responding and trying to meet people's needs. Something that they might struggle with is boundaries. So they might be so over-focused on the other person that they lose track of themselves or they might not set good professional boundaries for themselves. So that's one way in which that could play out is, you know, they might neglect themselves in some way. Gosh, that sounds like the vast majority of my audience or something like that. I mean, right? Like, well, it's not just my audience. I feel like that sounds to me like a majority of people who do any kind of personal growth program. I don't know, because I feel like in the past few decades, the idea of self-care and boundaries has become so important to talk about. And to me, that sounds like an anxious attachment style. Doesn't that? Yeah, boundaries also comes up in disorganized attachment. A little bit less in avoidant attachment. We'll get to that in a second. Yeah, yeah, sure. So the, yeah, so that's the anxious style is like they can focus on, yeah, making sure that they're being consistent with their, say they're, oh, we're just not talking about marketing. We're talking about client connections. Oh, no, it's okay. Either way. No, you can bring in marketing at this point, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, being consistent with their marketing attempts, their marketing endeavors, being consistent with their clients, all of that is important. Now for the avoidant style, their strength is they can be very analytical. They can be great. Now they're the guys who are great with spreadsheets. Sorry, I don't mean guys. This can be any gender. Yeah, sure. But they tend to be a little better with those sort of like task-focused, analytical-focused things, just as a generalization. All of this is generalization. And where they can maybe work a little more is around the kind of interpersonal, it might be helpful for them to focus on their empathy building, identifying their clients' feelings and needs and helping their clients identify their feelings and needs. That's where they might be a little stronger. And when it comes to marketing, it would be how, what does their audience feel in need? So connecting with their audience can be helpful. That would be a point where it could be helpful for them to develop. And then for the disorganized style, they can flip-flop back and forth or they can lean more towards avoidant, or lean more towards anxious like I said, they have this fear component. And so, and remember that's based in trauma. So that fear component, it's helpful for them to find ways for them to feel safe. This is a lot of the work that I do in the more romantic side of it. But I can definitely imagine how this can come up for a solopreneur because so much of the work of a solopreneur involves putting ourselves out there, right? It's scary to put ourselves out there for a lot of people. And to be seen and then there's the consistency of creating a consistent message and connecting in an emotional way, you know? And so all of that can kind of play in together. So for the disorganized style, again, there's boundaries, like they wanna work on having really good boundaries. They wanna work on that consistency because they can go from hot, cold, hot, cold. Like they might be very warm one minute and then kind of drawback because that didn't feel so safe. So they drawback and they kind of, yeah, sound familiar. Again, this is like everyone in my audience. Yes. So yes, they might hear that a lot. It kind of makes sense. I mean, you might get fewer people with avoidant attachment style, partly because they do tend to be more solo. I mean, they may join group programs, but they often do tend to work solo. So that does make a lot of sense. Yes. Yeah. That's interesting. And so this is really good. So then let's move a bit into, and then we're gonna complete the interview shortly, but let's move into like, well, what can we do? Yeah, for sure. If we find, if we see ourselves in these patterns of, for example, like you said, hot and cold, not so consistent or we are too, not too empathetic, but we're really overly giving to our audience. Like we're like, oh gosh, I gotta respond. Or reply thoughtfully to every comment, you know? Like, and this is why some people burn out on social media. Like they don't wanna think about social media because they're like, gosh, I have all this overwhelm of people are going to be looking at me and I gotta care about them and da, da, da, da, da. Or like you said, the avoidant style is, I'm gonna say, let's lean into the anxious style because like I said, I think that's probably more of the folks in my audience. People who wanna work on other styles can work with you privately on this, but anxious style, how can they, what are some things they can remember or do to stay more balanced and have better boundaries as they do their online visibility? Yeah, that's really great. So remembering that the anxious style is consciously or unconsciously seeking external validation, they can start to begin to remember their own self-worth and their self-love. And self-love can be a little bit of a struggle for folks with that style, with the anxious style. And so there's lots of practices for self-love. I cover it in my course. There's all kinds of different ways that we can work on our self-love. But that can be very valuable for them and boundaries working on, like you said, like, okay, I don't need to respond to every single comment right now. Like, I can do this at my own pace. Short is nice to be responsive, but making time to do that and not feeling the stress of balancing it out with finding that work-life balance is really helpful for, well, for all of the styles, actually, but for different reasons and different ways. Yeah. That's great. Because, yeah, the sustainability of our business depends a lot on the sustainability of our marketing. Yes, we get some new clients, usually through word of mouth, all of us do. And yet with marketing, that word of mouth is so much greater. And so we have to, you know, in my experience, in my, you know, in my observation, the more consistently we show up, the more likely there's a full client load, et cetera. And so yes, let's all work on these practices of self-care, self-love, self-esteem, so that, and boundaries, like you said. Yeah, this is really great. So before I ask you about how people can work with you and the offers, any other advice or insight you wanna share before we start to complete? Sure. So I mean, I could maybe offer your audience one practice that you could do to kind of build that self-love, self-compassion. Yes. We've all struggled, right, around, you know, putting a message out consistently or putting ourselves out consistently or whatever it is. Just being an entrepreneur can be challenging sometimes. And so remembering that failure is feedback and it's temporary. And just having that self-compassion for yourself can be so valuable. And so one thing to do for yourself is to just imagine, like in those times when you've had a hard time, like, or say you're imagining a friend is going through a hard time, how would you, how would you speak to that friend? How would you kind of remind that friend that's okay? And then compare it to, okay, how do you speak to yourself when you have a setback in your business? And then just kind of noticing, okay, what's the difference? And how might you change your language so that you are giving yourself more warm and loving and supportive messaging around your business and around your self-worth? And some people even like to kind of write this out, prop it up somewhere, they'll remember it like next to their computer screen. Like the old thought and the new thought, like I'm not getting enough done. Like I think that's a problem for entrepreneurs. It's like, I didn't get enough done today and change that to something like, I'm doing as much as I can and I don't know what a good rewrite for that would be, something like- I'm doing as much as I can and it's important for me to rest. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, yeah. I'm doing exactly the right amount and rest is important. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, and each person, like you said, it can be creative with how, and based on their own style or their own personality and their own needs and their own interests can write what. So this is brilliant. This is really, it's so simple, but it's profoundly helpful if we do it. Okay, just we have a few minutes left and I wanna make sure people know how to work with you. And so, two things I want you to talk about. One is your course, okay? And secondly is if people wanna work with you individually, is that available? So start with your course. You mentioned that earlier, yeah. Yeah, great. I have a course called Secure Attachment Rewire and it's a course designed for the anxious attachment style to build in more self-love and good boundaries and self-regulations. Some of the things that we've been talking about today and into their relationships to build a relationship that's what they want. And that is available as a self-paced course. It's a seven module course and has lots of different videos and audio meditations and stuff like that to help you rewire your attachment system for more security and ease in relationships. And then as far as one-on-one coaching, I do that as well, George. Thanks for asking. And that is also available at my website. All of this is at KayleeLarkin.com. You can download my 10 ways to, let's see, what is it called? 10 ways to build secure attachment and a fulfilling relationship. And those are 10 ways that you can kind of incorporate steps into your daily life for more ease and joy and security in your relationships. So all that's available. I know you have a lot of great free resources on your website and on your YouTube channel, et cetera. How does someone know that they're ready to work with you individually as a client? That's a really great question. I think that if they go through the material and they resonate with what they read or if they resonate with what they listen to, then they'll know whether or not it's a good fit. But they can also reach out for a consult if they want to get more clarity. And I do a free 20-minute consult. They're welcome to reach out on my website. And I know you work, tell us about some of the kind of presenting issues or situations that clients come to you for that you really enjoy working through. Yeah, love that question. So I do a lot of work with people who they are, perhaps they've had a string of relationships that have these like familiar patterns of distancing, pursuing, and they're tired of that. And they're really into doing the self-growth to figure out how to change that pattern. And so they want to have relationships where they're not doing that anymore. They want to step into building a new type of relationship, one where they're getting their needs met and expressing their needs in a way that is held and respected and reciprocated and build a more reciprocal relationship. And also to build a better relationship with themselves. Yeah, that's awesome. And I imagine you could do the work of people who want to apply this to their business, their marketing, their connection, their relationship to your audience as well. Yeah, I suppose I could. I mean, I haven't specifically done that before, but I think that it's all related in some way. Yeah, and it starts today now. No. So folks, go ahead and just overwhelm Kaylee with your request for working with her. Yeah, thank you so much, Kaylee. I'm so glad we got to do this and looking forward to more. Thank you so much, George. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you.