Financial Behavior Workshops · Mississippi + Greater Los Angeles

Brian A. Street, MSW

Financial Behavior Specialist

Every money decision starts as a thought. Brian teaches people to catch that thought, test it, and replace it before it hardens into a habit.

Brian A. Street

The approach

Most people already know what to do with money. They still don't do it.

Traditional financial education assumes the gap is information. Teach the budget, explain the interest rate, and behavior will follow. It rarely does, because the spending, the avoidance, and the quitting are driven by beliefs people formed long before anyone handed them a worksheet.

Brian founded Your Legacy Begins Now to treat money behavior as behavior. He brings a Master of Social Work, a psychology background, and more than 13 years of mindset and counseling work to a cognitive-behavioral model built for classrooms, branches, and community rooms. In Los Angeles he delivers the workshops with Anna Ishkhanyan, who leads the body-based half of the room.

Where his work fits

Every money decision runs the same five-step chain.

  1. 01Situation
  2. 02 · Brian's focusThoughtRetrain the belief
  3. 03 · Anna's focusFeeling
  4. 04 · Brian's focusBehaviorRehearse the new habit
  5. 05 · Brian + AnnaResultRead from both perspectives

Brian built the model and teaches the whole chain. His own work concentrates on the second and fourth links: the thought that sets a decision in motion, and the behavior that either repeats the old pattern or replaces it. Anna works the third, where a thought becomes a physical state.

They meet again at the fifth. Brian and Anna review results with participants together, so every outcome is read from both a man's and a woman's perspective.

Expertise

What Brian brings to the room

Cognitive-behavioral method

A structured way to trace any money result back to the thought that produced it. Participants learn to name the belief, weigh the evidence for it, and practice a replacement they can use the same day.

A social work lens

MSW training in administration and empowerment. Brian reads the household, the workplace, and the community around a person, because money behavior never happens in isolation.

Bilingual delivery

Brian facilitates in English and Spanish, with a decade as a bilingual trainer and years living and working in Bolivia and Costa Rica.

The discipline underneath

Delayed gratification is a skill, and skills can be taught.

Willpower runs out. A trained response doesn't depend on it. Brian's workshops take the moments where money decisions usually go wrong and rehearse a different sequence until it becomes the default.

The moment
The automatic pattern
The trained response
The impulse
The automatic pattern"I deserve this." The purchase happens before the thought is ever examined.
The trained responseName the thought, wait out the urge, and decide once it has passed.
The unopened bill
The automatic pattern"I can't deal with this right now." Avoidance grows the problem.
The trained responseOpen it, state the number plainly, and take one small action the same day.
The raise
The automatic pattern"Now I can finally relax." Spending rises to meet the new income.
The trained responseDecide where the increase goes before the first larger paycheck arrives.

Change the thought, rehearse the behavior, and the result follows.

In the workshop

What participants do with Brian

  • Map their own chain. Each person traces one real money result back through behavior, feeling, and thought to the situation that started it.
  • Test the thought. Guided practice separating what's true about their finances from what they've assumed for years.
  • Rehearse the replacement. Realistic scenarios, including YLBN's Legacy Simulator, where a new response is practiced before it's needed.
  • Stay accountable. Every engagement connects participants to YLBN's free, ongoing accountability community after the workshop ends.

Background

Trained in behavior. Proven with institutions.

Education and experience

  • Master of Social Work, focused on administration and empowerment
  • Bachelor's degrees in Psychology and Spanish
  • Two years of doctoral study in Social Entrepreneurship
  • 13+ years in mindset and counseling work
  • 12+ years in entrepreneurship development
  • 13+ years as a bilingual foster parent trainer

Institutions served

Higher education

  • Jackson State University
  • Clark Atlanta University
  • Winthrop University
  • USM School of Social Work
  • USM Entrepreneurship Hatchery
  • Jones College

Banking

  • PriorityOne Bank
  • Century Bank
  • Bank of Franklin

K-12 schools

  • Hattiesburg Middle School
  • George County High School

Government and public health

  • Hattiesburg Mayor's Office
  • Mississippi Behavioral Health Learning Network
  • McComb Public Library

Community and faith

  • MoMentum Park
  • Kuntry Kidz Youth Foundation
  • DREAM of Hattiesburg
  • Beulah Baptist Church
  • Mt. Wade Baptist Church
  • Urban League of Mississippi Young Professionals

Media and publications

Featured in

  • Authority Magazine
  • The Black News Channel
  • Mississippi Business Journal
  • Positive Impact Magazine
  • New York Weekly

Published work

  • Blueprint Health: A Social Solution to Obesity in the Workforce and Communities of Mississippi, Mississippi Economic Review
  • Social Entrepreneurship in the Social Work Curriculum: A Hybrid of Social Work Macro Practice Principles & Innovative Business Activity

For banks, universities, and community organizations

Put a behavior specialist in front of your people.

Brian delivers Financial Behavior Workshops in Mississippi and Greater Los Angeles and accepts engagements nationwide, with programming suited to community development and CRA-aligned initiatives, student success offices, and nonprofit partners.

Request a proposal See the services Meet Anna

Workshops are educational. They don't constitute therapy, medical care, or individualized financial advice.