Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Christi Diamond. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Christi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Yes, we have many different touchpoint and the type of trauma and healing work we do is different than any I have seen. We work a process that grows the emotional intelligence of an individual at a rapid level. We do intensives here on property, housing our guests in a VIP suite and we coach them with both husband and wife being represented in both of us coaching together as a couple. We also have created “love nudges” which are texts 2-3 times a week to keep couples present to each other and on each other’s radars. We are always asking ourselves “What makes us stand out in our industry that no one else is doing?” In our intensives we are 100 percent focused on the couple and their own issues. Everyone has their own unique healing and circumstances and we feel we cater to each individual and the couple itself

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve had deep heartache in relationship. I fell in love and in my naive mind, I thought I knew what it would take to create the best marriage ever! Granted, I didn’t necessarily have the greatest example in my own childhood, but somehow I thought that love was all it took. It wasn’t a bad example, it just wasn’t the best example. My dad was a workaholic and always gone and rarely present with us when he was home and my mom went through bouts of depression raising 7 girls, leaving some room for neglect and not enough connection. My parents never argued in front of us and yet there wasn’t a real sense of freedom for us to express our emotions openly either. My parents didn’t have great communication skills. They gave us morals and values to live by and I was raised in a good home but I didn’t have the solid foundation of how to do relationship. I married and my spouse had his own background and examples from his own childhood that he brought into our relationship. He grew up in a home with an abusive father and there were nights he, his siblings and his mother had to leave for their own safety until dad cooled down. So we came together to form a home, a marriage and a family and I daresay, we were a train wreck waiting to happen. The odds were against us from the beginning. We both had poor communication skills, our own baggage and insecurities, our trauma and our own beliefs. We also had a whole lot of love but not a whole lot of experience or education on how to do relationship well And there were already red flags flying high before we ever said “I do”.

We had three boys and built a life and a home but the gap between us grew wider over the years. He became an abuser and I became a control freak and our love was not enough to carry us through the hard things and soon our relationship disintegrated into complete dysfunction and we divorced after 12 years and in the process, I lost me, my confidence and my belief in myself after repeated abuse and deep wounding.

I lived as a single mom for eight and a half years looking to heal and reinvent myself and to pick up the pieces of myself I had lost. Eventually, I met a man, fell in love thinking I had healed it all only to find that soon after the honeymoon was over, I still had wounds I had not yet resolved from childhood AND my first marriage, even though I had done a lot of inner work.

Because here is the thing, as Harville Hendricks says – We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can heal in relationship.” And we cannot be fully loved until we are fully seen. Being fully seen means being vulnerable and real and raw with ourselves and our partners. I was afraid to truly trust again and so my partner suffered a great deal because of my unresolved wounds. He would trigger my trauma unknowingly and I would respond in kind. Eventually we got to the core of both of our woundings and realized that we had married our ‘unfinished business’ so we could go through the cycle again of destroying yet another relationship or find the healing and our way back to each other that brought us together in the first place.

Through our own journey we found that if we could go back to the gaps that created the wounding and heal those gaps, it would change us, our lives, our relationship and our families. We both worked for years with the founders of Marriage Bootcamp Reality Stars and did numerous intensives as directors, speaking on stage, working with couples, really getting to the meat of what was pulling couples apart into conflict rather than connection. We saw that a key factor often overlooked in our industry is the art of repair. Not many know how to truly repair from the past and to again close the gaps that stunted our growth and emotional intelligence. We found that those we did this work with had instantaneous results where the emotional intelligence grew, trauma was resolved within a matter of moments and connection deepened to a heightened level.

We created personal intensives with couples at our retreat center and were blown away by result after result of couples telling us “We have never in all of our years of marriage created a connection as deep as we have with the work you have done with us. We are blown away with the results.” Some couples were on the verge of divorce coming to us and left so deeply connected and committed to each other. We love this work! It is remarkable! It not only saves marriages, it grows deep connected roots to build from and there is nothing more fulfilling than seeing that!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing out clientele has been building relationships. Most of our clients have been through word of mouth. We literally quadrupled our business last year all because we took the time to build the relationships with our clients. When you get into the thick of someone’s marriage and all the parts of it, it can be very vulnerable. We first create safety for them to share their story and a sense of trust. We open the space to create such a safe container to do so in the work that we do. People love that they get both the male and female perspective when they work with both my husband and I and nobody is ganged up. So we build trust quickly. When they would come to bootcamp, we built trust and safety there as well. We are fully transparent with what our own struggles in our marriage were and we share our journey with them in appropriate moments. As we build trust with them and do things to support them by what we have to offer and continued integration our work together, we build a relationship with them and they then trust us with their family and friends knowing they will be well cared for. We don’t overpromise. Integrity is absolute key in building solid relationships and being there to serve rather than focused on the money.

Any advice for managing a team?

First of all we had to be willing to be supported by team and know that we could not do it all on our own. When we created our company we were birthing together, we were very intentional about it’s mission and the culture we wanted our company to have. Putting people in positions where they truly shine at their genius and have stewardship of their roles without micromanaging them was key to high morale. We have each team member fill out a form caller “The User’s Manual” and it’s just like an operating manual but about each person and what they need for us to get the best out of them, what will get the worst of them, what makes them tick, what work environment is most conducive to their productivity, etc. This was a game changer! When we knew how each person operated best to maximize their results, and how to support them in shining, it created high morale! Don’t ever put people in positions that they aren’t good at, it creates resentment and frustration and burnout for both them and you. Let people shine in their own brilliant way!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thehealingcoach.com
• Instagram: thehealingcoach
• Facebook: thehealingcoach.com

Image Credits
Cheryl Beamis