What happens when explosive success turns your ADHD business strategy upside down? Dani Donovan returns to reveal the hidden reality of scaling a tool for neurodivergent communities and keeping up with sudden demand.

For every ADHD entrepreneur, founder, or business owner with ADHD navigating rapid growth, delegation struggles, and high cognitive load, this conversation offers actionable clarity.

Discover practical insights on ADHD business operations, accountability, and real-time decision-making when your business evolves faster than expected.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 - How Viral Products Create Explosive Demand

06:00 - ADHD Product-Market Fit and Underserved Audiences

12:00 - Building and Launching a Viral Product

19:00 - Content Marketing, TikTok Virality and Storytelling

26:00 - Scaling Too Fast and Business Operations

33:00 - Perfectionism, Burnout and Entrepreneurial Growth

40:00 - Email Lists, Algorithms and Sustainable Business Growth

47:00 - Entrepreneurship, Autonomy and What Comes Next

3 Key Takeaways:

• Find—and serve—the underserved audience. When you truly solve a need for people who’ve been overlooked, you can create explosive demand. Building something specifically for the ADHD community, with real-life empathy and nuance, was the game-changer
• Prepare to adapt at warp speed. Virality can supercharge your business, but also breaks systems you thought could scale. Managing inventory, support, and planning for unpredictable spikes is a different beast
• Don’t skip the foundations—even if you’re “too busy.” Invest in core systems you own—like email lists—not just social media channels. Otherwise, you’re at the mercy of algorithms or outside platforms.

About today’s guest, Dani Donovan:

Dani Donovan is an award-winning designer and creator of the viral hit product, "The Anti-Planner: How to Get Sh*t Done When You Don't Feel Like It."

Known for her relatable ADHD comics, tweets, and TikToks, she's been helping shape the online neurodiversity community since 2018, and her work has helped thousands of people seek an ADHD diagnosis and treatment.

Connect with Dani:

Website - Instagram - TikTok - X

Dani's viral tweet:

"Finding out you have ADHD as an adult feels like being told you suck at Mario Kart your entire life and then finding out your game generates 40 times more banana peels than it's supposed to"

About the Anti-Planner:

Tapping into her own frustrations and the lived experiences of ADHD peers, Dani Donovan spent over 3,000 hours creating The Anti-Planner, calling it a “productivity spellbook.”

It is a lovingly designed, non-linear, highly personalized compendium of over 100 strategies for overcoming procrastination and building emotional resistance.

Dani obsessed over every detail: the comforting size, playful illustrations, durable faux-leather binding, gold foil, thick paper, pen loop, and rounded corners. It is gorgeous, practical, and nothing like all the planners you’ve bought and abandoned two weeks later.

Buy your copy of the Original Anti-Planner here. (Dani also has a Clean version if you are not so sweary…)

P.S. If you missed my previous interview with Dani Donovan episode (and The Anti-Planner’s original “theft” story!), it’s a must-listen! Ep #318_ Somebody Stole My Sh*t: Copycats, Counterfeiters and How to Protect What You’ve Built

Your ADHD-ish™ host, Diann Wingert

Diann Wingert brings decades of experience as a psychotherapist and serial business owner and is now a sought-after coach to entrepreneurs with ADHD traits. Her style is direct and strategic, with a dash of humor, and filled with the insights of someone who lives and breathes the neurodivergent experience.

Diann is a fierce advocate for self-acceptance and meaningful growth at the intersection of neurodivergence and entrepreneurship. She is the creator of the ADHD-ish™ Method and host of the top-rated ADHD-ish™ podcast.

Want to grow your business AND survive your own success while doing so? Book a free consultation with me and let’s talk about how I can help.

© 2026 ADHD-ish™ Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Melody Loops / Outro music by Vladimir / Bobi Music / All rights reserved.

H: Our first interview on this podcast was all about what happens when you create something so freaking brilliant that somebody decides to steal it and pretend it's theirs. I will link to that episode in the show notes. For those who haven't heard it yet, it is a must listen. But today we're going to talk about what happens when the magical thing you create is so much more desirable than you could have ever anticipated. How we estimate how much of something to make and what breaks in your business when supply and demand are miles apart. So let's start with why do you think there was so much demand for The Anti-Planner in the beginning?

G: So The Anti-Planner to me again, feels like it fills a space that was previously unoccupied, that should have been occupied, which is that people who struggle most with productivity, people with ADHD, do not have tools that are like, specifically designed around how their brain works. There are ADHD planners, but they are essentially regular planners that require consistency. They require you using them every day, at their core are not like inventions, I guess, in that they are just putting a slightly different spin on an existing genre of product, which is, you know, planners and there are different kinds of like gamified apps and stuff like that.

But it, everything sort of loses its luster, there is no one, you know, silver bullet for anybody, let alone people with ADHD who are starting things and trying things and constantly trying to get our shit together. I have always said self-improvement is my longest hobby, but like, it's because these people need the most, we need the most help, and we're not being served. And so there's an underserved population with a invisible, you know, struggle that's just happening in all areas of their life all of the time. And so I had been making ADHD comics for a really, like, for quite a while and had thought to myself, I'm gonna make an ADHD planner. And so I started kind of down the same path initially, which was like, I'm gonna have a planner that's going to be like self aware and kind of funny, but like ultimately is still a habit tracker, you know, and all this stuff.

And I made this field guide that my business coach at the time had like recommended, which was about keeping track of like, what was working in my business, how I was thinking about it. And I made this, like, I was using it to do things like theme weeks, and I was using it to make, you know, my excuse list of what I keep saying I don't have time, when the reality is I'm not making time. And over time I realized I was using these strategies to work on the ADHD planner. I was not using the ADHD Planner to actually do its desired function. I was using all these weird strategies I was coming up with and then I just sort of looked at it and went, this is the thing, this is what's working for me is having a bunch of different novel things. I'm making them, you know, I was doing hand lettering on them.

And so I took a bunch of these strategies that I have just sort of over time collected, created and decided to put them in a book and ended up sort of categorizing the because having over a hundred strategies and games and activities is still too much to handle right. It's like I'm going to get overwhelmed and indecisive just trying to open this thing. And so instead the book is like divided by different ways you're feeling. So there's like a stuck tab, an overwhelmed tab, unmotivated, disorganized, discouraged. And within those have different kind of subsections, so kind of stuck. Are you having difficulty getting started? Feeling perfectionistic, distracted, what have you. And you go to that section and that's where the activities are that are specifically tailored and geared to fixing the executive dysfunction roadblock that's in your way.

So the activities themselves are super helpful. Everyone loves ADHD life hacks but the thing that I'm proud of, you know, the framework underneath the Sistine Chapel of my work is the executive function. Feeling mapping is the what different types of unmotivated are there? What different types of disorganized, you know, what experience based from the ground up categories emerge versus trying to start with symptoms like time blindness and working down. And so it doesn't feel clinical. It's from, you know, my voice, which is very like pure and it's funny and self aware, humor. But it also fed straight with the grievances and struggles of my ADHD audience that I had built up from my comics. And so I was able to then launch The Anti-Planner to the exact people who needed it, which is kind of where that product market fit came in, along with having kind of no competitors in this space.

H: Yeah, I mean you, the thing is, is that most of us with ADHD have got dozens, maybe even hundreds of planners and all the productivity tools, but they all tend to look and feel and sound the same. And the sad result is that we think the problem is us because we buy the tools and we either don't use them or they don't work for us. And so to your credit, you not only went with your own lived experience, but you asked other people about their experience. So there is no like, oh, if you're procrastinating, do this. It's like the level of nuance and the level of specificity, you get so down into the weeds and it's like, that is how I'm feeling and that's what it actually requires. But if you are a person who doesn't have ADHD and you're trying to help or support someone who does and you say, well just do this. We not only don't feel seen, we oftentimes feel angered and insulted because it's like, are you fucking kidding me, you don't think I've like literally tried this a million times? So I love the specificity of it where identify not like the general category of how you're feeling and the impact it's having on your ability to get shit done, but the exact description of it which is so…

G: The eating chips and salsa for dinner, you know.

H: Yes, that comes or cereal for dinner.

G: Microwave popcorn for dinner or something that I know does not have protein in it and I feel the shame. And so the like anti shame angle of the like, I know you because I am you. I am not trying to pretend like I am above you and I'm handing you the answer. I am in the trenches and I am still in the trenches. I'm not going to pretend like I have my shit figured out. And I think that that authenticity of not feeling someone's trying to fool them, like someone coming in and saying, I don't expect you to use this all the time. This is meant to be used when you are struggling as a momentum building machine. Because making the decision to do something is the hardest part. And if you bust out an anti planner and you even if you just think to yourself, I'm just going to look, the decision to look for a solution in itself is the first domino into you deciding, well, I'm already started.

And the first starting step is not anything to do with the task itself, which makes it far less intimidating to kind of get that momentum going. And so I really think that people with ADHD who specifically have this like kind of intimidation, but the internal resistance, this self sabotage that happens, this internal anger, then frustration with like, why do I know what I need to do and I can't get myself to do it, which defines executive dysfunction, knows that we recognize our behavior is destructive or disordered or hurting us, and we can't stop doing it. And so someone who's thinking, hey, you are in the cycle of wanting desperately to get your shit together, buying some sort of productivity solution, trying to fix it, inevitably quitting, like hating yourself or getting angry at yourself, struggling in silence until you've had enough and you decide to get your shit together and you buy another thing.

And The Anti-Planner really wants to focus in on that inevitable, like, what if we planned on you quitting, babes? Like, what if we knew you were going to do this and so instead of having an umbrella solution, hoping it's going to work, that a hammer is going to solve all of your problems, saying you need a screwdriver. And you actually don't just need a screwdriver with the, with like a Phillips head screwdriver, you need a flathead screwdriver, which is looks similar but is slightly different. And so like tailoring the tool to the actual resistance is what one of the things that I think really helps people. And so the word of mouth, just people having something, working for them and telling. Because we travel in packs you know, if someone, if you got adhd, you got people in your life who have adhd because you're like, oh, you get me. You understand me. I'm not worried I'm annoying you.

H: No, it's exactly right. So you knew in the beginning, you knew this was something different. You knew it was something good, and you knew that it was going to meet a need for people who have been trying so hard to get those needs met and haven't been able to do so. And that propelled you through all the blood, sweat, tears and toil that the 3,000 hours you put into creating this incredible thing and getting it done and getting it out in the world. But how at that time, Dani, did you begin to estimate? I know this is good, I know this is going to help people. I've done the market research, I've put in the hours. Like, how did you initially guesstimate what you thought the initial demand was going to be based on I would have just pulled the number out of my ass I'm really….

G: You were like, you did the market research. I'm like, false.

H: I mean, you listen. Okay, I'm giving you some credit but like, you talked about, you talk to people in your…

G: But that's part of the thing. So that is part of the thing is that I did not do market research. I think that that in itself lends to maybe some of my. But it's difficult because again, market research works when you have things to base it on. You know, what are your competitors? What's nothing to compare this to.

H: You talk to people in your community and so it's not like research.

G: Yeah. Yeah. So I was like in again in the trenches like I think they call it social listening, I wasn't doing it on purpose. All I thought I was doing was posting about my feelings and then reading and engaging with people and seeing, you know, feeling so relieved that I wasn't alone. And I think that that's a big thing here too is that like acknowledging you don't have to feel guilty, you are not doing this on purpose. We're gonna work on it together and every step counts. And so I think that I wasn't, I didn't do market research. What I initially had based my pricing on, I had found a company that had like a notebook, like a custom notebook builder online. So I was able to see I want to build exactly what I want with gold foil and an elastic band and rounded corners so it doesn't get dinged in the mail, you know.

H: Spiral, so it's really easy to turn the pages binding like because…

I think it was like $18,000 or something like that that I had saved up from Patreon because I was working a full time job at Gallup as a designer. And I had my Patreon just going into a bank account and pretending I didn't have it. And that money was what I was going to use to buy 500 to 1,000 because that's what I thought I could afford. And then I found out that I was going to, I got asked to be the closing keynote speaker at the 2021 International ADHD Conference. And I thought to myself, if I'm going to release something, I should launch it or have it ready or at least have pre orders ready by the time I give that talk. Because I'm going to be talking directly to ADHD coaches and therapists and people with adhd. And so that gave me an external deadline and some accountability.

And I hired a project manager who had some experience sort of with self publishing. And so I immediately started working towards the actual goal so I didn't get it done, but I had pre orders ready. I took money at the beginning when people placed their pre order, I got the money and then I was using that money to pay for the books. I did like a limited run of 10,000 and I realized pretty quickly that like it was gonna take off because I went to that talk, gave that talk, launched the pre orders and over half of the attendees bought books and like immediately afterwards crashed my it could have been much more than that, crashed my website.

And so I, but it just really like blew my mind to see what the demand was very quickly. And so what those pre orders allowed me to do was to not take out money. But like the amount that I was going to be able to buy rapidly started to like increase. And so before I knew it, I had, you know, four sold out pre order runs of 10,000 each and I managed like the books were never, I was never able to launch the books because they weren't staying. They all sold before they got here on the boats, you know, from Turkey so.

H: Wait, hold on. So I mean, you went from a run of 500 to 1,000 because that's how the minimum order you had to get to be able to create the quality that you wanted. And that's what you could fricking afford so five hundred to a thousand. And then you get an opportunity to get in front of a, what I call a high leverage, high visibility event. Like many, many, many multiple thousands of people come to those virtual events. And I mean, every time I speak for Attitude magazine, 10,000 people show up and the international ADHD conference, it's probably between fifty and a hundred thousand.

I don't even know the numbers. So like that was a very smart thing to say, yes to that and it was a very smart thing to think. I've got to get this thing done and ready to go and offer pre orders because that would be fumbling the bag in the worst possible way. You'd never forgive yourself but to go from like 500 to a thousand to like 10,000 times 4,40,000. I'm just imagining your brain just kind of exploding a little bit like, do you remember what went through your mind?

G: It's hard to conceptualize that many people. Like, so now it sold like 115,000 copies, you know, in the time that it's been out. When I try to think about it, I think about the biggest sports stadium I've ever been in and know that it's more people than that. Because the biggest sports stadium does not have house. 115,000 people. I think it's like 108 and so like it's but I think about every single person in those stands holding an anti planner. And like, that's the only way my brain can think about how many people that is, which is, you know, and I've had so one of the reasons why it took off and why I was able to sell at that number was A you know, I had word of mouth from ADHD coaches who think this thing is cool are going to tell their ADHD coach, you know, peers or friends about it or clients about it but ultimately I had started taking pre orders.

H: Were you surprised because all of these things go together, I'm thinking the timing of it, the number of people who have figured out they have ADHD during the pandemic, like 10x right. The ADHD family.

G: This is peak Covid.

H: Bingo. So I'm just thinking the timing of this and you know, every, a lot more people were on social media because they were at home and you know, people were scared and freaking out and all of a sudden they're around all their family members all the time and still trying to get their work done and the kids are trying to get their school done and nightmare. So you had the opportunity to not only get in front of many, many thousands of people who are all connected to ADHD, but also all the folks on Twitter and TikTok. I think where I first found you several years ago and it wasn't through the Anti-planner, it was through your comics. You were not just going viral on Twitter, you were going viral on TikTok as well. Was all your content organic? Were you working with a social media marketing manager? You were just pulling out of your buttons, pulling out your phone and recording.

G: Yeah. So that was the crazy thing. So my comics were going. Were what kind of launched my career and started going, getting big. They were never 300,000 likes viral. But the first one, the ADHD storytelling one did get huge. Someone else reposted it to their Facebook with How I tell a Story. They took off the ADHD part and that went like, had like 100 million views like it was huge. They sent me the analytics from it and so but I didn't have, they cropped off all my stuff so I had no watermark on it, which was whatever. But that would have made me scale even faster but I had those tweets and then after the book I did some like pre order TikToks. But it wasn't until after the book was out and I had my book on TikTok shop and then what happened is we put my book on TikTok shop and somebody commented on one of my other videos because my videos weren't really like taking off.

I was doing little tutorials and here's what the book is. But I wasn't talking about myself really or the business of running the book. And somebody said $48 well, now it's 58 because inflation and I had to put it on Amazon and all this stuff. But it was like at the time it was like $48, do you hate poor people? I remember I can never afford anything that like helps me and I responded, not in this like, you know, at first it's just like, oh my God, seriously? But like, but responding to it in this, like it is totally understandable to be frustrated when things are expensive. But I'm going to tell you why The Anti-Planner costs, what it does and I went through. Here are the luxury materials that went into and the thought that went into why I picked these luxury materials.

Here are the extra costs and fees that come from the operational side of pick fees and storage fees and shipping fees and getting the books from the printer to the warehouse to ship it to you in the first place, right? And then the third one was like all the backend work of customer service and someone to do my international taxes and all this stuff to make sure that I'm like compliant and legal and not going to go to jail for tax fraud or something like on accident because I don't know what I'm doing, right? I have to pay people and so I have all of the stuff that makes it run and those costs because it's just me because I'm not a big fancy publishing house with access to super, super cheap publishing materials even. I have to price it this way and people it wasn't just the ADHD community that came out and supported and have this video go viral, which is the thing that kicked off the counterfeiters, if you remember in the first place.

But it was people who wanted to come and support the creator who wanted to say, you don't have to justify your prices to anyone. It was small businesses saying, oh my God, I'm so sick of people you treating me this way or acting this way. And the storytelling and the business and the creator behind it made that go viral. And then the other one that went viral again was about the counterfeiters was about I can't keep up with them during the holidays. The two videos that I made about storytelling about here's how much work I put into it and here's the story of what's going on in my business right now. Those resonated with people, the me stories more than here's what The Anti-planner can do for you, which is pretty crazy.

H: You know what though, I think these are such great lessons because most folks with ADHD who have a business, we may believe like hardcore in what we're doing and we may think this is really good stuff, but putting our face and our voice and our likeness out on the Internet, quote unquote, putting ourselves out there and talking about the value of who we are, what we made, what we do, how we can help people, it's like so cringe. And you mentioned something earlier about imposter syndrome. It's like, I think we have imposter syndrome, but the people who actually are imposters, they don't hesitate for a second. I call them the shamelessly self promoting know nothings. They're out there singing and dancing and mediocre, singing their own praises and you know, the public doesn't know the difference.

So they're like, you know, confidence sells. Confident is hella sexy so they're like, well, that person really sounds like they believe in themselves so I'm going to go them. Meanwhile, we're like, God, I really hate to have to bother you, but would you buy my thing? So it's like learning that when you are vulnerable, when you say, I understand that this may seem spendy to you and let me tell you why it needs to be. And people are like, you know, it just, it brings back this feeling of like how small businesses are going away and everything is fucking corporate now and people want to support small business owners, they want to support artists and craftspeople and that was such a responsive chord. But then, hey, I got ripped off and I can't believe this happened.

It literally, I think, made you 10 times more popular overnight. But you had to have the guts to say, this is what's happening to me. Instead of being ashamed that you somehow allowed this to happen or you didn't anticipate it might or prevent it from happening. Because a lot of people would go there, they'd be like, oh my God, why didn't I realize this was a possibility? Why didn't I lawyer up? Why didn't I get, you know, copyrights and trademarks in China. How the hell would you know? So a lot of people would feel so ashamed that something like this could happen to them that they would never, never talk about it publicly. But your willingness to do that actually made you 10 times more visible and 10 times more relatable.

G: I think that the storytelling aspect just really translated over well from talking about my lived experience with adhd and being like the Internet thus far has been receptive to me talking about the moldy coffee cups in my office. You know, so, like, I have been open about and vulnerable and authentic about the deepest, darkest shame parts of my life. So being able to feel like I can be honest with my audience, you know, this went beyond my audience. But, like, my audience with what's going on is like a safety thing for me that had built up from trust over time to feel like I'm not going to take to.

You know, there were not a ton of people in the comments who were like, agreeing with the person who asked if I hate poor people. You know, it was people who are like, very this is a very loyal community. They were like, how dare they well, so here's what happened. I messaged, do you want to know what I did? I messaged that person back and I said, hey, if you want to give me your address, I will send you a book and I'll send you $100 to buy the card, the stuff that's required to do things in the book like a card you can get a card deck, you can get some nice erasable pens like, here are the things I recommend. And she was like, oh, my God, thank you so much, you can't believe how much this means to me. Blah, blah, blah.

Because again, you look at that, you see hate comments like that, and it feels like this is somebody who, like, what an asshole, they deserve shit like don't give them you know. That part of me was like, you helped me make so much money, so thanks. Part of me was also like, this is, I am not the problem here. Your employer, if your employer does not pay you enough money, there's a systemic problem that is making this seem so expensive like you have been. There's a whole capitalist soapbox over here for me to stand on. But, like, at the end of the day, I think that that compassion towards people and that willingness to be open and vulnerable is such an asset. Even though it's so scary, but it's one of the few scary things that like, stopped seeming scary to me because it seems pattern recognized that there was such positive response to it.

H: It also happened to you on such a tremendous scale that I almost sometimes wonder when it's like with rejection sensitivity and the fear of being seen and all the past issues that we've had with visibility that did not go well. And it's like death by a thousand paper cuts. But what happened to you, the magnitude of scale was just so profound that I almost think maybe it just resets your nervous system and you're like, I not going to be afraid anymore because I have bigger fish to fry. I got bigger problems to solve. I literally have to save my fucking business right now. So let's talk about, like, I mean, because these things all kind of happened around the same time. We've already told the counterfeit story in the other episode, so we're not going to go back to that. But when the supply and the demand was so far off, you had to really go into high gear really fast, what was that actually like?

G: So I saw that the demand, how high the demand was, how much, you know, exposure I was getting. And there were kind of two things that were happening was like A my brain was like, this is going to keep happening forever right? Like that, whatever, what's the bias called? I say recency bias, but the continuation of I am on a trajectory this is just now taking off, this has been happening like this is going to keep happening which fallaciously not true.

H: Whatever it called you, like strapped into the roller coaster for like…

G: I'm like, oh, because it felt like, oh, this is just the, like trajectory. Because it wasn't even out yet, right? It wasn't even out yet and it kept doing this and part of the reason it kept doing it was again, because of the limited stock. Start with the viral TikToks happened after I had had stock but because you can't do pre orders on TikTok. But I was seeing all this stuff all these people who were signing up for it and I realized this is huge. These are like, I am I wasn't able to put myself in category like they don't like self published people going, but like my book does not fit in a category that can be submitted for New York Times bestseller. But based on their, like pre and also you have to have stuff on more than one platform. I was only doing it like on my website. It doesn't count, couldn't do it. But like based on the numbers of what you have to hit in order to pre orders in order to be considered a New York Times bestseller. I hit those many times over. So like the…

H: But you can't claim it because of those number.

G: I can't say it. I could probably say, I feel like I could say comfortably that it's a bestseller, but I can't say, you know, New York Times thing. But I felt like, okay, wow, I have this pressure now. I already have a lot of pressure I put on myself. But this is gonna, this is clearly going to be so popular. I must make this as good as I am humanly capable of making it. Because what I don't want to do is get a shit first version out there just to get it done, just to meet my initial first deadline I had for myself and told them, hey, it's going to be done by this date. I don't want to make a bad first draft for all these people who are supporting me early and turn around and make a bunch of amazing edits for the second version.

I don't want to do them like that. It is very important to me that the first one that goes out is as close to perfect as I can get. And because I didn't have a publisher breathing down my neck because I had the money coming in to be able to pay my bills and pay for the books, I had the luxury of being able to stretch my timeline out to make room for my vision that I had. And so I took my designs that I had been using for like, I did do beta testing. That was another huge thing. I had 8,000 people who beta tested and gave me feedback on the harvest activities from the book. But I was able to make those adjustments, do beta testing, feedback, and ultimately decided after I had like this one nice to haves versus must haves.

It was this Truth or Dare graphic. I wanted to get the lettering right. It was one of the last graphics in the book and I wanted to get it right. Didn't like it, didn't like it finally landed on a lettering style and a coloring style. I was like, oh my God, this is so good, this looks so great. And I looked at the rest of my book and I went, this doesn't match. It's better than the other stuff. I need to make the other stuff on this level because now I know I'm capable of this level. And I redid and retooled and I added new stuff that wasn't there and I upped the illustration quality by tenfold. Anything that looked like a worksheet, I was like, this isn't going to look like a worksheet. I'm going to trick you into not realizing this is a worksheet right.

Like I went like over delivered because of how many people were ordering it when there wasn't that much pressure. I didn't think it would have been that big of a deal, I think. And so, but in doing so, and there was this, hey, by the way, I had to announce there are shipping things that is going to make this take a lot longer. But on top of that, I am getting a little perfectionistic. I promise it's worth it, here's the before and after. Here's some of the stuff I'm adding, being again very transparent and telling them how ashamed I was for not meeting the deadline and people responded. This is one of the best emails I've ever gotten, I feel so seen. Don't worry about it, we're just happy you're still going you know, so much support.

Nobody, I think I had like two people who got, who wanted refunds out of again, tens of thousands of people. And so it was just this crazy response from people who were like, keep going, you got this was doing 12 to 16, 17 hour days, back to back to back to back to back. Not drinking enough water, not taking care of myself or eating right, ordering a bunch of food or having chips and salsa for dinner and my body really atrophied. I was on muscle relaxers from a doctor prescription and I ended up literally having muscle atrophy to the extent that I had to use assisted mobility devices when I went places. I was using wheelchairs because…

H: Oh my goodness.

G: Yeah, like this is pretty, I mean it's extreme. But like I didn't talk about this for a long time that I literally handicapped myself because I wasn't taking care of myself because I was trying to make this so perfect because I wanted to do right by my community and I didn't want to make them wait too long and the unforgivable sin of a creative person is disappointing their presence.

H: And the unforgivable sin is disappointment. I will freaking kill myself before I will let people down who have trusted me, believed in me, supported me. But you know what in spite of all of this, I think I know the answer to this question, but I feel compelled to ask it anyway. Do you regret any of it? Would you do it any differently?

G: I would not do the launch or like all the stuff like leading up to the major sales, everything from after it launched and after it no longer had the FOMO of I'm only doing 10,000 of these. And after, which happened at the same time as say, Elon taking over Twitter and my views on tanking. And as soon as we started doing TikTok shop ads because I was so burned out that I stopped making content, which was another problem cause content was what I was the entire marketing department, I had no help on that front. And so what ended up happening was like, I took time off. It felt like I was fine because I had so much money kind of that stacked up from the pre orders that it felt like, okay, now I can take a break.

Now I can take time off now I can take care of my body. And I did work on like strengthening up and like going swimming and doing like all of these things to finally start to take care of myself. But I took my foot off the gas and my hands off the wheel. And I really kind of over delegated because I was exhausted of making decisions. And in doing so, there were a lot of calls that got made that were not what I would have done. There were a lot of calls that got made that have, that ended up hamstringing my business, that ended up being big, huge mistakes for my business. And it's so hard because on the one hand, everybody tells you need to delegate. You need to be okay with people doing things, not how you would do them.

You need to let go of control. And then on the other side, people are like, you need to trust your intuition. You need to make sure that you are like still involved in your business. Like, you can't completely take your hand off the wheel. You can't, you gotta put in the hours like if you want your, you know, no one's gonna care about your business as much as you like. There's different sort of camps of advice that feel like they're competing. And so I ended up spending so much time working on the business that I stopped being creative and I stopped making content and I stopped like having the source energy that was making my business go and making it popular got drained out of me by me doing something I'm not good at. And that I do and I hired a lot of the wrong people, that is what I regret. Definitely not the like scaling too big, too fast, but the not knowing what to do once I had the funds and not going, I know what I need, I know how to run a business.

I know how to reinvest this money in a way that's going to be really, really useful, I did not know that. So that's I regret not looking, researching and taking training and stuff on that better because when I want to do training, like if it's art related, I have no problem getting myself to go learn how to do it. Right now I'm doing graffiti lettering with highlighters, right? I want to go learn how to do this. What I don't want to learn to go do is how to manage people like I need to, but I don't want to take management training, man, you know, like it doesn't. Even though it's so important because deep down it's like I never would have signed up for this job. And when I made the book and launched the book, I didn't think about the job that I was signing myself up for.

H: This is probably the number one, I would say in the clusterfuck of beliefs, biases and blind spots that are the ADHD creative entrepreneur. We are usually led by passion and purpose. You felt passionate about being able to create a solution for brains like ours who are desperately seeking solutions and are disappointed by the available options again and again and again and continue to think I'm broken, I can't do things. I'm the only one who's like this. Why can't I just get my shit together? Why can't I figure this out? Why can't I just find the and it's that like you call the silver bullet, I call the magic pill. We just keep looking for the perfect thing so you poured yourself into making it passion and purpose.

You were not thinking, oh, I wonder what it's going to be like when this sells out. Oh, I wonder if what this is going to be like when it 10x my income. Oh, I wonder what it's going to be like when I need to go from being an artist and a craftsperson and now I'm a fucking CEO and I'm running a big ass business with all kinds of people like that's not why you went into business for yourself. And let's not forget you had like an actual business that you were trying to run alongside of everything that went on with The Anti-Planner and the counterfeiting and the virality and the scaling so much faster than you ever could have imagined. But ultimately you were doing all these things that you never set out to do, you never anticipated doing and you didn't have a plan for. So it's like, how could you have anticipated what was necessary?

G: It was so challenging too because I am being autonomous is so important to me. Like the reason why one of the I got offers from major publishing firm like the majorist publishing firm to, to produce The Anti-Planner and the amount that I was going to make off the books, I was like, this is so exploitative. Like I don't at that point I don't want to sold 25,000 pre orders, I'm like, I don't need you guys, thank you though. And the but like also I don't want you to be able to tell me I have to strip stuff out of this that makes it beautiful. I don't want you to tell me that I have to take the giggity like this, the 10% gray giggity off of the bottom of page 69.

I don't want you to tell me that I like that I can't have stuff in here or water it down from someone who doesn't have adhd. And so that was this big like not just unique streak, but this I want to protect what's mine and I want to not have someone tell me what I can do. And the difficulty was feeling like if do I need a business manager. Is a business manager going like, I need someone else to run this. I don't know how to run a business and I'm not good at it and I don't like it. But what if I put someone in there and now I can't make the calls and then the business goes in a direction that I don't want it to go because I've given away that autonomy and it happened a little bit.

But the idea of finding the right person to run this and then keep true to my vision. As soon as I do something like that or you get a business partner, you do whatever you are saying, I'm okay with the vision that I have turning sideways potentially and me not having the autonomy to be like, yeah, no, that's done. Because you know, for whatever reason, like, so the nobody, I think I'm saying nobody was steering the ship. But to use a metaphor that you and I have chatted about I had been like a graphic designer, I'd been like a line cook my whole life. And then I moved up to getting to be a chef and making what I thought people, people would like and that went over so well.

People loved it, the restaurant was flourishing. There's so many people coming in the door that now they're like, oh, you did great, now you own the restaurant. Like, you are the business owner of this restaurant, but also we still need you to be the chef and also sometimes the line cook, because we're really low on line cooks. And I'm running around, you know, everybody says you have to wear a bunch of hats, but it's like, I now have three jobs and I'm still expected to take care of myself because I remember what happens when I don't.

H: That's insane. And, you know, I think it's the lure and the seduction of entrepreneurship is undeniable. And I think so many people have been seduced into entrepreneurship because it's been sold as this glamorous, you know, lifestyle option. And a lot of people are not well suited to it. But even those who are, you are well suited to it, I am well suited to it. But then once you're like, oh, you've drank the Kool Aid, now you're an entrepreneur, now you're self employed, now you're your own boss, but you create something good. And now everybody starts whispering your ear.

Don't you want to scale that and in truth, what's next? We talked about this earlier like, what's next? And so it's almost like that feels more like you've been strapped into the never ending roller coaster than any of the rest of what's happened because why do we have to keep ratcheting up? Why do we have to keep going for bigger, better, faster? When is it okay to say what's most important to me is autonomy? What's most important to me is that I am not pushed into occupying roles that I am not good at and I do not want to learn how to be good at. Like, yeah, you leave money on the table. There are worse things that can happen to you destroying your health and crushing your creativity, for example.

G: I found that the challenging thing was also that again, when I had said that, I didn't know, I didn't know how things work. But I was starting to move the business to where the business was, the lifestyle creep. I was having business lifestyle creep that came up with the amount of success I was having with early success with the book because of the algorithm not mentally going, you are putting your brain in basket or you are putting your brand and your money in baskets that you don't control. I was so anti, I was like, I hate emails. I'm not going to do email newsletter stuff. I can't do everything. I'm not going to do emails.

And not doing that even though email lists are like the channel that you own, the only thing that you can make sure that you get in people's inboxes in a way that algorithms can't. I had so many mistakes that I sort of made that were like, I personally don't like Facebook, so therefore I'm not posting on Facebook right. Like there are and I then again, I can't do everything. But there are certain things like that where I put my eggs in those baskets and I was having the viral spikes and those viral spikes made it. I was hiring the people, I was hiring financial advisors. I have had multiple financial advisors, they don't know how to run with a business that operates on viral spikes. Like, they don't know how to forecast, they don't know how to help me.

So I'm paying people who don't know how to help me and I'm pouring money into trying. But I don't know if I should fire them and find another person who can't help me you know, what do I do? What do I do? And so there's this scrambling and there's the shame that, you know, everybody says you're going to fail, you got to fail as a business. Welcome to the school of business. This is how much it costs go forward, everybody does, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the reality is I'm like, I was tired of failing, but I ended up now in a position where I don't get to do what I have so many ideas for what's next. I've started on the what's next so many times, but then I get sucked back into, but we need to sell the books that you've got sitting in your warehouses. Yeah, but we don't still don't have a marketing department. You've hired a marketing firm.

You know, you've hired people to help you with marketing, it didn't work out. For whatever reason, you got screwed over X, Y and Z. Like the thing that you end up with is I am now working on trying to keep the business operating. I'm operating from the mindset of I don't want to go. I want to make money because I don't want to go out of business versus and I want to be able to pay people and I want to be able to like, not go back to working for someone else instead of getting to focus forward, like you said, on the passion and purpose of serving the community. That is the reason I got into this in the first place.

H: Oh, my gosh. These lessons are potent and powerful and also painful. And they're not often spoken about because everybody's trying to make themselves look like they've figured it all out and they've got it all together and they're doing it all right. But I think this is probably, in a way, the journey of someone who is a creative person who meets a market need that isn't being met, and they do it with their whole heart and all of their talents, and then it far exceeds their expectations.

Because everything that could have made this easier, Dani, would have required you to be a fortune teller for you to be able to forecast the future, for you to be able to imagine what you need and what you'll need to do when you're going into completely unknown territory. So I think the fact that you didn't completely lose your marbles, your mind, your sanity, your marriage, like, you still have your business, you still have this beautiful productivity spell book and many, many, many ideas that are still waiting for fruition. But like, I hope that you are honoring the path that has brought you this far because this is one wild ass ride you've been on.

G: That is definitely the case and I think that those, you know, they say like the dips that you're going to take on that roller coaster are going to match up with how high the highs were. And the highs were high, those were the highest highs possible right. And so I think that getting back used to the I keep joking about how the stuff I'm doing now is the stuff I should have been doing if my stuff wouldn't have gone viral. I'm setting up my email flows. I'm doing all these things that you do at the beginning when you're starting to scale up, when you get to scale up, I would say a normal way. But in doing so, I got to have those exciting moments. But I also went, I want someone to give me a map. And even though if somebody gave me a map, I might not do the map anyways because sometimes I don't like being told what to do. I only want to be told what to do when I tell people to tell me what to do.

H: And even that you may push back. I think I know you well enough to know that.

G: Yes. And, like, I want to make this unique, one of a kind product. But now I can't figure out how to go online and find out how other people did it, because other people didn't necessarily do it the same way I did. Everyone's like, do a competitive analysis. I'm like, I tried, man. And so that thing of, like, I actually saw Moana. This Moana 2 resonated a lot with me, because in Moana 1, I don't know if you've seen these movies, but in Moana 1, she, you kind of like, go sees the like, I want to leave this island. I see what's out there and, like, goes and has this big adventure and comes back and really helps her village. This is I'm trying to say spoiler free. You should watch Moana but Moana to Moana 2. She has had this massive success, and now she has to deal with the everyone expects so much from you, and now what.

You know that, like, what next and how are you going to. And then she has to manage a team, which she is not good at because she was out on her own, doing her own thing. And so really has this moment where the girl. One of my favorite songs, she meets someone who talks about getting lost and how you have to, like, get lost and lose your way, to take leaps that you don't know how it's going to turn out, because that's the only way that you're going to grow and so I really kind of resonated with this. Like, she said, there is no map to your destination, there is no equation to solve this thing that you're in. You keep looking for that map, and there isn't a map. You have to go out and way find and make the map yourself.

H: And this is even more true if you're neurodivergent. Because even if there were people that you could have asked or even asked now to help you figure out your what's next, even if they're neurodivergent, they're not exactly like you. So when people say that entrepreneurship is the ultimate personal growth path, this is, like, extreme version, right? When you buckle up for this ride, you buckle up for all the knowns and all of the unknowns. And you have still done everything right as you've learned what you needed to do along the way. We are so hard on ourselves, Dani. We are so good at saying, why didn't I anticipate this? Why didn't I see this coming? Why didn't I plan for this? Why didn't I predict this? Why didn't I know what I would need to do when I get to this point, I'm like, why would you? Why would you? I mean, we are the everything's figureoutable kind of folk. And we do figure things out. Maybe it's painful, maybe it's expensive, maybe it takes a long ass time and we feel really tore up in the process, but we figure it out.

G: Yeah. And so that's really where I'm at right now as far as what's next is really trying to focus in on the things, the skills that are going to help me the most. The things that I had been putting off not wanting to, like, the uncomfortableness and growth comes from my people. Pleasing comes from my, you know, like, I have a hard time holding people accountable. That has been one of the big reasons that my business has struggled. And that comes from I don't want people to be mad at me. And I have a hard time, like, worrying that someone's gonna go home and like, be complaining about work and that work is my employment. You know, like, I'm afraid that I don't want to feel like a hypocrite.

So I can't hold people accountable because I'm struggling. So how hypocritical would it be for me to get on them for. Even though I'm paying them you know, to get on them for not doing what they said they were going to do because I just told them something I was going to do and I didn't show up in that way. And so, like, I think that there are ways where, again, ADHD and people pleasing, like, character qualities of mine. I don't need to stop being nice to people. But until I get over that internal fear of what others think of me at all times, you know, the rejection, sensitivity. Until I get over that, like, I'm never going to be able to go to the next step because I'm never going to be able to, like, holding people accountable and coming up with what they need to do is key to having a successful business. And I can't just ignore it because it's uncomfortable.

H: That's a mic drop moment, my friend. I think we want to end with that boom.

G: Yeah.