Meet Dr. Brie-Anna Willey

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dr. Brie-Anna Willey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dr. Brie-Anna below.

Dr. Brie-Anna, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

This is a good question because for a while, I was neglecting my creative self. I’m a therapist and I’ve spent alot of time, attention and effort building my education, my skills, my niche and I built my therapy private practice to the point of having a waiting list. And yet, something was missing. Through a ton of self-reflection and support from my peers and mentors, I realized a piece of me was missing and that piece was my creative self. When I started my education and “career,” I unknowingly and accidently began suppressing my creative self. Sure I let her out from time to time when I picked up my guitar or made a meme to advertise my first business but overall it was suppressed and while I was suppressing it accidently, I was suppressing a big part of myself which included my neurodivergence. I also didn’t know I was neurodivergent until last year.

How do I now keep this alive? I built a second business which integrates my creativity and neurodivergence and it’s called Business for Nerds and I enjoy creating in it such as in building memes, editing podcast episodes with flair, adding Canva remixes, creating music and sharing it, writing short stories. Now I’m trying to find balance with the creative self and the business self as my creative self wants to have fun alot but my business or professional self realizes, “hey I gotta make an income too.” Working on that balance now.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m Dr. Brie-Anna Willey, therapist and business coach, researcher and rebel writer. I run Business for Nerds and the Compassion Reset Quest—an evolving ecosystem designed to help sensitive, neurodivergent, and heart-led humans build businesses that honor their energy instead of draining it.

What excites me most is blending scholarship with storytelling. My doctoral research explored compassion fatigue among counselors in private practice. Today, I translate those insights into coaching and writing that speaks to therapists, creatives, and entrepreneurs who feel “crispy around the edges.” Through quests, prompts, and even a bit of gamification (side quests, scrolls, XP systems), I help folks reset the way they do business—so it feels more human, sustainable, and authentic to who they are.

My current focus is my coaching program and book Compassion Reset Quest which is a soft rebellion against hustle culture. I’m building this in public on Substack. Each chapter weaves memoir, research, and gentle business strategy. Alongside the book, I host “low-key hangouts,” coaching circles, and reflective side quests (often async) that give people space to reconnect with their creativity and design businesses around their real lives—not someone else’s algorithm.

What I’d most like readers to know is this: we’re not broken, we’re just tired. Burnout and compassion fatigue aren’t failures of effort—they’re signs from systems that weren’t built with us in mind. And we don’t need more hustle. We need a reset.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1. Stick-to-itiveness. I’m stubborn to a fault, but that persistence carried me through overwhelming jobs and hard seasons. Those experiences, especially in workplaces that didn’t understand compassion fatigue or vicarious trauma, helped shape the book and quest I’m building today. Stuck points became stepping stones.

2. Hyperfocus. My ability to zero in and immerse myself fully has allowed me to research deeply, write prolifically, and create coaching frameworks that are both practical and imaginative. For neurodivergent folks, hyperfocus can feel double-edged, but it’s also a powerful creative force.

3. Multidimensional thinking. I see problems and solutions like layered maps. I draw from psychology, teaching, music, even pop culture references to craft writing and coaching that’s not just informative, but engaging, entertaining and relatable. This can help build resonance.

Advice for others: Pay attention to your nervous system, especially early on. Stress and burnout aren’t signs of weakness, they’re signals. Learn from them, honor your limits, and let those lessons guide your growth (and help you set good business boundaries).

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

The biggest challenge I face right now is follow-ups. As a highly sensitive, neurodivergent person, I’m deeply aware of my own feelings and how my actions affect others. That empathy is a gift, but it can also make me hyperaware, leading to overthinking, indecision, and decision fatigue. Following up, whether with potential clients, collaborators, or even simple emails, has been an ongoing hurdle.

To work through this, I’ve leaned on mentors, including Scott Perry, and even tools like ChatGPT to help me create strategies and systems that make follow-ups feel less overwhelming. I’m learning to see them not as pressure-filled obligations, but as opportunities for connection. It’s still hard, but by talking it out, building structure, and giving myself grace, I’m slowly turning follow-ups from a stressor into a practice of care and consistency.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Pictures and memes by Brie-Anna Willey | Business for Nerds

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