‍Kristina Flynn has had a psychiatrist since she was twelve, collected diagnoses like frequent flyer miles (anxiety, depression, OCD, bulimia, and more), and still didn't get an ADHD diagnosis until her thirties, after her daughter's birth blew up every workaround she'd been quietly running for two decades.

‍Now she runs Story EQ, where she helps people find the story underneath their work. Everybody tells you to stop overthinking. Kristina Flynn built a company on it.

‍We talk about why doing your own branding is a fool's errand (spoiler: your brain isn't primed for reality, it's primed for your perception of reality). We talk about the Mensa-level geniuses who sit across from her and say "I'm not that interesting."

‍We talk about the specific, weirdly universal terror of what your old colleagues will think. And we talk about AI — not as a voice replicator, but as something that can understand your context if you feed it properly.

‍Fair warning: if you're sitting on an abandoned rebrand, three different mission statements you don't believe, and a nagging sense that you should be further along by now — you're going to feel a little called out. Stay with us anyway. ‍

WHAT’S INSIDE: ‍

● Why Your Old Story Isn’t the Whole Story: How narrative identity, negativity bias, and corporate conditioning have shaped the way you show up ‍

● The 4 Stories Framework (Stealable Worksheet): Start mapping your old story, bridge story, and how to shift from “it’s about me” to “it’s about them”

● Radical Self-Acceptance Checklist: 5 mindset shifts to finally move past shame, imposter feelings, and waiting for permission ‍

● Overthinking as an Asset: Quick exercises to turn rumination into action, content, and connection (instead of procrastination) ‍

● Your First Move Blueprint: Micro-steps to start building story-driven content — without oversharing or burnout

FUN FACTS

Kristina and Diann are both pretty sweary and swear by the research that concludes swearing is a sign of intelligence. You decide!

‍Kristina & Diann met through Coach Vox - the platform where they both built their digital clones. If you haven’t signed up for Di AI yet - what are you waiting for? Here is the link to sign up for free.

ABOUT KRISTINA

Kristina (with a 'k') Flynn is an Overthinking High-Achiever (OHA) helping other OHAs turn their wild careers and stories into personal brands that feel like them and make sh*tons of money.

‍For 18+ years and across 11 roles in 8 industries, she's built brands for NBA All-Stars, Olympians, venture capitalists, Youtubers, founders, and executives.

The through-line across all of it: wildly capable people who are great at seeing other people's value, but can't see their own. In 2023, she built StoryEQ™ to close the gap.

‍

LINKS & RESOURCES

‍Kristina’s: ‍

WebsiteStory EQ Framework PDF LinkedIn ‍

The episode with Evan Sargent on branding ‍

20 Feet From Stardom (2013) — the backup singer documentary I mentioned

Brené Brown

Simon Sinek

‍ ‍

YOUR ADHD-ish™ HOST

‍Diann Wingert is a former therapist turned coach, speaker, and consultant who blends her expertise in entrepreneurship and neurodiversity to help others thrive.

‍Host of the top-rated ADHD-ish™ podcast and creator of The ADHD-ish™ Method, Diann works with ADHD-ish™ business owners who are ready to create stand-out, sought-after, profitable businesses based on their unique brilliance.

‍

WORK WITH ME

If this conversation hit a nerve — if you've been hiding behind your credentials and waiting to be discovered on the strength of good work alone — that's a strategy problem, not a character flaw. Let's fix the strategy problem together — schedule your call here.

ADHD-ish is hosted by Diann Wingert. If you got something out of this one, the single most useful thing you can do is send it to one person who needs it. Second most useful: leave a review.

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

H: Like most females, you didn't figure out you had ADHD until your 30s. And it happened right around a life changing event, the birth of your daughter. I think you've described it as it ruined your life and your life needed to be ruined. Take us back to that moment and how it led to your diagnosis.

G: Yeah, so no one really likes when I say having kids ruined my life. And I say it as a bit of a hook, because the back end to the hook is it actually needed to be ruined because the way in which I was operating, the systems that I was using, they weren't actually sustainable moving forward. So the birth of my daughter, my wife carried, she gave birth, it blew up my entire system because I was no longer able to say, hey, I need to catch up, I need 48 hours away. Deuces, babe, like you got this right? That was no longer the option and at the time, I was also a startup founder. Our company was flailing and failing and it was about six months before COVID so it was something that needed to happen, but actually, surprisingly hadn't happened up until that point because I have had a psychiatrist since I was 12 years old. So like many women, my diagnosis was missed in the system.

H: I have so much to say about this. I will not belabor this with you, my friend, but it's extremely common for otherwise competent, well trained and caring therapists and psychiatrists to utterly miss underlying ADHD in girls and women presenting with anxiety, presenting with depression, presenting with disordered eating. You checked all those boxes and you're going to see mental health therapists for years and they're treating you for all the ocd, they're treating you for all these things. And it wasn't until your life blew up with the birth of your daughter that you got in front of someone that says, actually, I think there's another player driving the entire bus. I'm so annoyed that this is so common.

G: To be honest, I had to get over it. I had to get over like the I don't know if anger is the right word. Maybe it was anger, it was like complete confusion. How could I be in the system and with the access and the privilege that I have being Canadian, having access to a psychiatrist since I was 12 years old, like those diagnosis, I was seen as having so much privilege in the system. Anxiety, depression, ocd, bulimia, like you name it. And yet, even though at that moment in time my psychiatrist was the one that introduced me to the woman, was a mindfulness based cognitive therapist who just happened to have ADHD herself.

She said, I think this is a diagnosis that you should explore. When I had to sit back down in front of my psychiatrist, I was pissed. I was like, what happened because when she said adhd, I had had so many labels up until that point. There was, it actually was unfathomable to me that that was now a label that was also being assigned to it. But not only that, it was a label that was seen as a bit of like a foundational label. Like that back the challenge, these things are symptomatic of that but really it's adhd first.

H: Yes, that is my professional and personal opinion. I know there are a lot of people that disagree. I know a lot of people feel you've probably heard the term comorbid or co-occurring, these are co-occurring conditions. I have seen literally hundreds of women diagnosed with all kinds of things. They, it looks like their pedigree is like a million different diagnoses but had the ADHD been identified early on, they may not have acquired any of the other. So I think I'm glad you finally made it to the right information, it's something to adjust to.

G: Yeah.

H: Not because you were hiding in plain sight, because you were actually being treated and still being missed, which is super, super frustrating. In your previous career, you spent almost 20 years making NBA All Stars, Olympians and founders Unforgettable. While you were kind of the power behind the throne, you were kind of very much backstage and felt that was where you belonged. Now a lot of us with ADHD who are over functioning get heavily into masking. I don't think that's exactly what was going on with you. What was going on that made you feel like I should be backstage and not out front?

G: I mean, like I grew up playing sport and in sport, playing basketball especially, there's role players and for me, that was my role. My role was number two and there are some people that are the people out front. There are some people that are the number twos and both are necessary for the system to actually run. I actually had a lot of pride and there was a lot of honor in that position. Being in service to other people was always kind of talked about at the team level like not everyone is capable of that. Not everyone can be in service to other people.

So for me there was a lot of pride and I grew up not wanting to be Beyonce. I grew up not wanting to be Diana Ross. I wanted to be there, but I wanted to be the backup singer. Like when I was a kid, I was like, I was doing like all the dancing, all the singing. I wanted to be there, so I wanted to be a part of it and not have the pressure that comes with being that number one in that expression that's since evolved. And I understand why I had that desire more than the number one spot. But for me it was, I took a lot of pride in it. I was in service of people that were. I put on a pedestal and that were seen by society as being on a pedestal next to me.

H: I think that's so much easier for women, the way we're socially conditioned to see the pride, to see the honor, and to really shape a lot of your identity around that but it's undeniable. I don't know if you ever saw the movie, what is it, 20 Feet from Stardom? It's kind of a documentary but it's all about basically the life of these backup singers and oftentimes they're broke as a joke. And we've known a few, you had a moment where you had to rethink. You know, maybe I need to be focusing on my own success and the financial wherewithal that comes with it. I think your daughter was about five years old. She was sick, your wife sent you to the grocery store to pick up medicine and your card got declined. You've talked about this a lot as an inflection point in your self awareness, in your identity and what you did next. Take us back to that moment.

G: Yeah. So it wasn't just a card, it was all of my cards. It was every credit card, all of my Interact cards like, and I'm standing in a grocery store line. It's at No Frills, which is like the lowest of the low grocery store and I'm not hanging out at like some fancy ass Whole Foods.

H: It's not Erewhon or Whole Foods.

G: No. I am at the lowest of the low grocery store and I've got medicine and medicine only, which also my wife now knows. Don't send her to the grocery store and say, get medicine. It's like, get this specific medicine on this shelf, nothing else and come back because she knows me in a grocery store is not a very good thing. So I've got the box of medicine and I'm trying every card and as we notice because of how perceptive we are, the faces around me start changing. And all of a sudden ,my own internal feelings start changing, I'm going, fuck, I can't actually spend 8.99 right now.

I don't have enough money to get my daughter, who is sick on my couch right now, the medicine that she needs. Which as someone who sees themselves as a provider, as anyone who has a child, I don't know who you are, you're not going to look at that situation favorably on yourself. So I don't describe it as like this big epiphany, but I left the grocery store and I just bawled in my car. And I don't know how long I was there, long enough for my wife to call me and be like, are you okay, like what's going on?

H: Where are you?

G: Yeah, like where are you? Literally in the grocery store parking lot bawling. And when I reflected on that moment over time, it didn't happen in that moment. But when I reflected on it, I realized that I think the story I'd been telling myself as a supporter of other people, not putting my own financial well being before others, over functioning for everyone but myself. I was waiting for permission, I was waiting for someone to come save me. I knew that I had privilege and that I have soft landings, even though I wasn't really always wanting to take advantage of it. So there was all these things layered on top of layer that basically had me believing that I wasn't in control. I wasn't the reason why that card and those cards got declined at the store and that I wasn't in control. Which in reflection on that I realized, holy shit, like this is only up to me. I'm the one that fixes this and nobody else.

H: First of all, even though they got it wrong for a lot of years, you definitely benefited from all that therapy.

G: I'm a therapized woman, let me tell you.

H: You most definitely are. I mean it definitely shows your self aware and your ability to feel your feelings, but then step back from them and say, okay, how the did I get in this situation? What am I going to do about it? And I applaud your choice of all right, well I've been believing a fantasy and I'm now in a very real life with a very real problem and I need to take responsibility for a solution so what am I going to do differently? You know, you're over functioning and the ego and the identity that really get wrapped up in that.

Also this type of mind, the overactive mind, the over functioning kind of personality comes from, it also has overthinking. You refer to overthinking your overthinking brain as your unfair advantage. And I know there are plenty of people listening right now that are like, what? Because their overthinking feels like they're drowning in quicksand. It is as far as it could be from an asset. Yeah, everybody ruminates. You ruminate. How do you make a distinction between just the overthinking that really you're just spinning and not going anywhere and the kind that actually is a super ability that makes you stand out with the business that you run now?

G: So first I see you on the overthinking and like I've been there and I'm there today and I'll be there later. And like it's just because I now know it to be an asset doesn't mean that it doesn't also feel like some days I am in a full on war with my own brain. So I see it, I feel it, it resonates deeply for me. The overthinking was something I tried to get rid of for a long time and we do this like we're great at self help. We're great at personal development because we love to learn and we want to learn and we're like, let's dig in and I can do this again. Always with the assumption that there's a problem to be fixed and that's for a number of different reasons. But for me, I tried a very long time to fix my overthinking.

When I've looked back on my content, I've even actually seen that I spoke about, don't overthink, don't overthink, don't overthink. As I got continuously down this road where I realized I was having a lot of trouble with the expression of my ideas, the expression of content, putting things out there, this idea of like just write it. It's such bullshit and it's so manufactured and it is specifically for people that presume that there is no negative repercussions for anyone just putting something out into the world and not having it come back to them. So it's a privileged perspective to just do anything, number one and it didn't work for me, it never worked for me.

So overthinking was something I tried to get rid of. And when I actually reflected on it again, I do a lot of reflection. When I actually reflected on it, it was okay, wait though. This overthinking is actually where like my detail and my nuance and my comprehension and my patterns and like things that I love. We talked about this, I love learning. I'm so curious. I love going down some dark, random hole that I can just spend time there. It's my favorite and it is where some of my genius lies so it actually isn't a disadvantage.

I think my company is a perfect example of that, Story EQ is my brain in a company. It was exactly what I needed for myself, turned into a process and an asset that I can now help other people with. So it's an advantage where it becomes a disadvantage or more harm than help is when actually it's leading to inaction. So we love to sit down and we love to strategize and we love to plan. There's a New Girl episode where one of the characters, Schmidt, goes like, I'm going to build a system and I always think about that. I love building a system, it's the best.

And that is actually just procrastination under the guise of productivity. It's not actually productivity, it makes us feel like we're doing, but what it's doing is it's leading to inaction. It makes me stay in the zone of comfort, which is where I want to be thinking and processing and planning and doing the beautiful mind thing my wife talks about. And I don't have to deal with the discomfort that comes with the expression of those ideas anywhere outside of myself. So that's the way I look at it, it is an advantage if you can learn and notice when it's helping you versus harming you.

H: I would add to that not being so precious about your ideas and I love that you have mindfulness training. I am a practicing Buddhist. I have a fuck ton of mindfulness training and the way that it's helped me the most is not being overly attached to any of my ideas, no matter how well developed they are. Because that overthinking, you know, you tend to get very attached to this idea baby that you've created. And then the thought that you might not do anything with it, or that you've wasted your time, or that you failed or that you know somebody else you know you should be further along. All of those really unhelpful things if you have an overactive mind, it's going to produce a lot of thoughts. Some of them are going to be brilliant and get you well paid.

Some of them will just be stimulating in the moment and they can sit in the parking lot and they don't all have to be winner, winner, chicken dinner. But also having no ability to contain any of that means you're going to lose a lot of sleep. And have a hard time getting things done. To that point, almost every entrepreneur with ADHD I've ever met, including, I'm sure many people listening now, are sitting at any given time on half finished about pages for their website, abandoned rebrands. They have been trying to figure out how to talk about who they are and what they do, figuring out their own brand all by themselves. I don't recommend it, I know you don't. What are they getting wrong?

G: Well, the fact that they're doing it by themselves is the first piece and there's a couple of reasons why this activity and this exercise, although a lot of people sell it, a lot of people sell sit down and do the icky guy. Sit down and do the mission statement. Take this course in this 90 days, we'll get you exactly what you need. The act of doing this by yourself is actually working against both biology and psychology, meaning that one, our brains are not primed for reality. They're primed for a perception of reality so when we sit down to do the work that we do and to reflect on what makes us valuable, what makes us unique, how are we differentiated? Why would anyone pay us?

That is all informed by a very skewed reality of who we are and what we bring to the table. Add to that, the fact that we don't even look at who you are is not a question you ask anyone in society. Everything always starts with what do you do? So your worth is tied to your work undeniably, at any way, shape and form in any stage of your life. it just is. So we don't even look at, and we're not used to looking at what is the source story actually involved here. And then you add layers like corporate conditioning, quite frankly, where we're told all of these things, we're told, you know what opportunity is going to come. Opportunity is going to come.

It's going to be handed to you. It's going to give you everything that you need. It's not true. So you're in this position where you have to sit down and you have to decide what your value is, and you have to decide how you're going to express that externally to anyone. And yet, even though you are to do all the exercises, why have you done multiple icky guys? Why have you done multiple mission statements? It's because you actually don't trust what you put on the page because you've spent decades erasing everything that is unique about you and authentic to you.

H: And I know we've talked about this in another conversation the brain's negativity bi and I'm not talking about the ADHD brain. I'm talking about all brains. The brain's negativity bias, which is that we are much more prone to remember from an evolutionary perspective. We are much more prone to remember the things that we don't do well, the mistakes we've made, our shortcomings, our limitations, than the stuff that's genuinely worthy of bragging. So when you're now going to say, okay, this is who I am and what I do and why you should give a shit and why you should pay me on top of it, and why I'm the best, we come up with nothing.

And here's another thing, and I know you hear this all the time from people who end up hiring you, even if they get to the point where they're like, okay, I know in order to have a personal brand, I need to tell a story, but I don't have an interesting story, like what I do and who I am not interesting. I hear the same thing from my own clients about their expertise. I only work with people that I think are interesting. And I'm sure you find everyone interesting, too, because we're both curious people and we see their patterns and the things that are just blocked from their awareness. What is actually going on when a person who admits, I'm accomplished, I'm experienced, I have a body of work, I have expertise, but yet they still believe their story isn't enough.

G: Yeah, well, they don't believe they have a story and again, that's because of the way that we experience life. The story that we hold in our minds and our brains and our bodies is really one that we've crafted and we've developed over time. And this is a concept that you and I have talked about called narrative identity, which is, as you have life experiences, you take on specific pieces of the story. Again, not necessarily reality, but rather perception of reality. You take on pieces of the story that you then take as identity. I am this kind of person. I am not that kind of person.

So you're going into this exercise and saying, well, everything I do is no big deal. Negativity bias says I actually have way more failures than I have accomplishments. So I don't see why anything is all that impressive. And I can't tell like, I've sat with Mensa level geniuses genuinely, who say, I'm not interesting, I'm not smart, I don't have anything to bring to the table. So this story that you've created about yourself is not reality number one. Number two, it's this idea of the value that you assign to yourself, especially as ADHD people is a really complicated thing.

H: The therapy is definitely showing. And I'll tell you, you know, it's always been interesting to me what fields folks with ADHD tend to gravitate towards. And one of them is marketing and personal branding. And I think it makes sense when you think about it from everything that you've been sharing Kristina. But also, we had to figure out what our story was from a very early age because we observed, I'm different. I think about different things, I'm interested in different things. I go about things in a different way. Most of us have gotten a fuck ton of negative feedback. Why can't you just, your sister wouldn't do that.

Can't you just, you know, so we have to make sense and we tell ourselves a story about who we are with the focus on the negative because we've internalized all that negative feedback and noted I'm not like others. And then you, you have the audacity to start a business that centers around a personal brand. No wonder we're not able to recognize objectively that we're interesting, maybe even fascinating, and that we have a story worth telling. Because the story we've been telling about ourselves, it's hurtful and keeps us feeling stuck. Then to add to things we tell people, well, you got to create content. You got to get out there and create content. You got to do behind the scenes content. You got to do content, content, content.

But you say that your story isn't about content, it's about context. And frankly, a lot of people are like, I'm so sick to shit of this content marketing. It doesn't go anywhere. I'm not getting the traction. I'm not even interested in doing it. So how can it be any good and how could anyone else want to? What do you think changes when, for example, when they're working with you through your process and they finally get it, they're like, oh, the story underneath the context, that changes everything by creating content from there, right?

G: I think it changes your relationship to content, or at least that's what it's done for me. For me, story is not only context, it is cognition. It is my way of understanding the patterns and the themes and the through lines that have led me to kind of this moment in time. And when I do work with folks, that is the goal. I can tell you until you're blue in the face how amazing you are, but actually, instead of doing that, you're not going to believe it. Number one, I'm going to show you objective evidence based on this transcript and the things that we've abstract extracted to say to you, these are the facts. Not to say AI is not biased, which is something I use in my process, but these are the facts.

Let's have a conversation, what resonates, what doesn't and then we get geeky with like semantics and energy and all that kind of stuff. But ultimately it's when you can see your story truly for what it does, not the, the reality or the perception of reality that you framed in your mind. You can show up with a much, much greater level of conviction in what you bring to the table. So there's an idea around, like the worth and value becomes different when you understand actually this random, wild career that I've been on that everyone tells me I fucked up because I didn't do the one path and I didn't focus on the one road and I'm not a specialist in anything.

Everyone tells us that our career is messy, mine, I have never, ever had a recruiter reach out to me on LinkedIn and be like, I've got a role for you. This is for you, babe, never with you. That is actually the advantage because when you go back and you start to look at the evidence, evidence that is extracted in your words through an interview with me, then you start to see these really interesting, all the way from upbringing, you start to see these really interesting patterns and themes and all of a sudden things start, start to make sense and you see them in a different way.

When I'm presenting a brand that's around a story I've created, when I then express that brand, I have to receive. I have to receive what's on the receiving end of it. I have to actually take into account what people think of that. If I have created that brand, what people think of that is going to change how I actually show up. It's going to change my copy, I have to tweak. I have to tweak and change and this and this, when it actually is something that feels resonant to you and there are words that you would actually use. The way that you show up in society, the way that you show up and express it.

For me, I found it much easier to deal with the negative that comes with building a personal brand because, okay, well, this is just me and I have conviction about who that is and how I show up in the world. So if it's not for you, it's not for you, it's a very different way of looking at it. And the content piece particularly, it results in you changing your relationship with content. It's not me formulating the perfect piece of content. What I've started doing is calling it overthinking in public.

H: I love it.

G: So again, when I overthink in private, it's harmful. When I overthink in public, I get to share my ideas with the world. And for me, it allows me to say, this is a little commitment to myself. Every week I'm going to put out at least one post and I just give brain fart. These are all the things I'm thinking about overthinking in public. I might change my mind on some of these things. I might not even believe any of them. They seem really fucking random, they're not connected, all these things. But my relationship to the content creation changes, instead I'm sharing my thinking versus actually curating it or generating it for the algorithm.

H: You know what? The number of people who desire an independent existence, whether they call it freelancing, entrepreneurship, creative self employment, what have you. Being able to actually turn an ADHD trait into their unfair advantage and get paid for it, be as good at it as you are and have so much fun with it. All the things that make you really good at what you do, you can trace back to ADHD traits. The curiosity, the, you know, the need for stimulation, the storytelling abilities, the pattern recognition, the ability to see different things in different places and recognize how they're connected, the love of words.

I mean, to me this is like winning with ADHD because these are things that you're going to do anyway because they're literally who you are. While so many of us are struggling with imposter issues, feeling like, I know I need to put myself out there, but I can because I have rejection sensitivity. You've worked with everybody from elite athletes to everyday normal business owners. Is everybody like hiding or feeling the need to hide? Or is there a difference between people who are like and I think about elite athletes, these people are in the public eye all the time. Do they hide too or what am I missing about this?

G: I mean, I don't think you're missing anything, especially when you're looking at athletes. There's a very interesting relationship between athletes and society versus a public figure and society, meaning we have assigned a role to them. They have a job to do, that's on a court, they play that role, they show up for media afterwards and they decide whether or not they build their brand outside of that based on their comfort level. Most of them tend to be relatively introverted, not very comfortable with the relationship that people have with them, because it's based on this idea that the individual is curating the story based on what they need versus this is who I actually am.

So with elite athletes, with people that are in the public eye in that way, there's a very interesting way to look at that because they're playing a role and they have a job, and when they're no longer doing that job, I don't necessarily need to be associated with that. That's very different than the Brene Browns, the Simon Sinek of the world that have put themselves out there based on their thinking and their practice and their expertise. And that's something that I've had to learn and I'm really still exploring every day of. When you are building a company or building a brand around the way that you think, your unique perspectives, your practice and your expertise, all of that is a very different reality to the public world.

And the expression of that versus just the expression of a skill, the expression of who you are deeply and what your story is and how that impacts other people is a very vulnerable state. And it's one of the things that I'm most fearful of and I deal with every single day. That expression piece and my tolerance for people's response to who I am authentically. It's one thing to understand who you are authentically and feel conviction about it. It is another thing to put that out in the world and deal with, especially with things like rejection, sensitivity, deal with the response that people have to you as your authentic self.

H: It's probably the hardest thing I've ever done and going from being a psychotherapist in private practice to being a coach online with an international presence, a podcast, all that, like, I was playing a role as a therapist. I wasn't a typical therapist, but it was a role. There were regulations, there were laws. I never swore as a therapist, even though I swore like a freaking sailor in my personal life.

G: Oh man, I love swearing.

H: Apparently it's correlated with high intelligence.

G: That's what I'm saying.

H: But there were, it was a role and I knew what the expectations were, I mean, very regulated, 50 minute hour. People come to you, all that branching out on my own and saying, okay, now I'm a coach. I don't have those roles anymore. Now I get to be more of who I am, now I get to unmask and unhide in every possible way. Yes, that sounds like freedom, it's also fucking terrifying.

G: Terrifying.

H: It takes time and you have to kind of means test not only how much of you can the people who are paying attention tolerate, but how much of you sharing yourself can you tolerate regardless of the reaction you get? I mean, it's a process, you know, and it, the longer you're on that process, the easier it gets. But then you can always get clap back, cancellation and that can send you back to the dark ages.

G: Well, and I think that's why I focus so much on self trust, because I think that's ultimately the driving factor in response to the fear. It's like I can be afraid, but if I trust myself, which doesn't happen overnight and I think is done through like micro moments of you putting yourself out there, if I can trust myself, then I can be okay with the response. It may not feel good, but ultimately we know how the brain works and exposure therapy is real. So if I can put myself out there enough times in the way that feels most comfortable to me, then over time my brain, my nervous system will stop seeing that as a threat. But again, that is intentional action and you are signing up for like the number one thing my clients tell me they are afraid of is what their old colleagues will think of them.

H: It's such a good point, Kristina, because in truth, even if we never really cared much about those colleagues. I mean, we didn't invite them to our home for dinner. You didn't introduce them to your wife. It's like but knowing, first of all that you had the audacity. The fucking audacity.

G: How dare you?

H: But as you know, it's human nature to seek a sense of security. I won't say it's security to seek a sense of security, doing what most people do, sticking with the herd. But you also know with ADHD, we make better outliers. You have created a framework that helps people create a brand that actually works. It's called the Four Stories framework. Now, we're not going to share the whole thing. First of all, we don't have time and secondly, that's your intellectual property. But walk us through one piece of the framework, a concrete, stealable takeaway so that people can get a feel for that.

G: So the Four Stories framework really comes from my work with folks and the process that I take folks through. There's the new story, or, sorry, there's the old story, which is like really your upbringing, your personality, the environment. What are the things that you've been telling yourself for a very long time, that's where limiting beliefs tend to come in. Then you've got this, like, existing story of how do you exist in the world right now? Whether you believe it or not, people are telling a story about you. Our brains are wired for story, evolution has done us a great service and kept story with us, there's a reason for that.

Because if I say to people I'm a middle child and have two sisters and I just stop immediately, our brains start to fill in the story. It's not necessarily the brain story, but is a story. So you have a story, whether you choose to believe so or not, and whether you choose to take control of it. Where we want to get to is this bridge story, which is I understand the story, I've looked at the facts, I've looked at the evidence from an objective perspective and these are the pieces of my story that I want to share with the world. I'm a firm believer that you don't have to share all the pieces of your story.

For example, I often talk about the fact that I now know at 4 is when I first lost self trust. I don't say why, that's for me and me alone and I get to decide if ever whether that will be shared. So I don't think story is trauma dumping the part I want people to be thinking of is once I've decided this is the part I want to share, it actually no longer becomes about me. The new story is actually how do you take my story? And how does my story need to be heard and received by the people I'm trying to connect with for that given purpose in order for them to resonate with my story.

H: Full transparency Kristina, you and I originally met inside a program being run by the founder of CoachVox. CoachVox is the platform where I built my digital clone, Di AI, and you built something similar. Now, a lot of people are worried that AI, it just makes everybody sound the same but you're not using it in that way. You are a storyteller and you help people tell their story. So how do you think about AI and how do you use it to make people sound more like themselves?

G: Yeah. So, I mean, AI does a number of things. One, I'm not trying to get it to replicate me. KBOT, which is my AI version of myself, allows me to scale my work. So I do eight weeks a full on Sprint with folks, but I don't do after that, I don't do continued engagement because I've learned that sucks my joy. It makes me want to puke in my mouth, I don't like it. What I want people to think of is not trying to get it to sound like you, rather get it to understand you. And what does it require in order to understand you is back to context. So AI, the issue with AI is not capability. It can do almost anything, the issue with AI is context. So what I do in my work with my clients is it's all about the data collection. It's all about doing a couple things.

One, how do we gather the data around that story, the nuance, the specificity, so that when they come to write content, when they come to create, it's aligned with them and who they are and that kind of bridge story that we've created. But we've also got this data set that now gives the AI a plugin to everything about you and all the nuance and all the details and preferences. Then we do this other layer which is really about communication mapping. So you and I having this conversation here, we could do analysis on this transcript and we could say how. What could be inferred about the way these two individuals speak from the data?

So what are the words that they would actually use in conversation versus what an AI is going to put out in terms of the best word versus my next best word. Those are two very different things and so capturing evidence of that and creating the context that says you AI would say this because you're trained based on the median, the status quo. My next word is never that and so you go back and forth with this process that allows for the feedback loop to train it and say actually no, this would be my next best word. This would be my next best word, knowing all that, you only are ever going to get it to 95% and I'm not outsourcing nor do I ever suggest to my clients to outsource the content ideas.

It's taking your ideas and putting them into a format with words that you would typically use that actually is something that you can post online so that's one of those things. It's really a matter of I use it for self reflection, I use it for better understanding, how do I communicate? What is the language that I would typically use when I can create a brand around language that is mine, not curated for me, my energy reflects that. My nervous system reflects that when I step on stage and I'm not reciting who I am and what I do, I'm living it and I actually believe it because those are words I use. I show up, my energy shows up, the audience responds to that. We neurocouple in a very like it is super geeky how this stuff can benefit you.

H: You are demonstrating a high, high level of self awareness about your ADHD and how you can operate within your business. You remind me of another friend of mine, Evan Sargent, who also has a branding company. She does sprints, she has been a previous guest on the podcast, I will link to that episode in the show notes. But Evan does like you do, she does sprints. She understands also ADHD to keep the work focused, time limited, time bound and where she's actually only doing her genius. Like you, she's an ideator, she doesn't really like the implementation so much. So now you have KBOT to help with the implementation and that also keeps you in your zone of genius and not doing the things that suck your energy so well.

G: Because my sprint requires a ton of energy, I need to get so much of myself and we tend to do that really well, right? Like we're very good at giving space to other people, creating these containers so that they can feel seen. In order for me to do that effectively, I can't have a relationship with them where I'm resentful of that. I need to set up the environment so I want to give them that. I want to give them my all but I also know because you learn it the hard way always you overextend yourself and I also know now I can only do three clients a month in a way that I can give my full self to them. If I'm doing more than that, it gets real sketchy and I don't feel like I'm able to actually perform. I don't feel like I'm giving them my best self. So it's all a matter of, it's all experimentation. That's what business building is, it's having a thesis, putting an experiment out into the world, fucking it up, getting the data on that, and saying, okay, what's the adjustment that I need to make?

H: 100%. And you've come to the same conclusions that I have, Kristina, which is that I only want to work in such a way where I get to function at my very best. That means I have to hand pick my clients and I have to only work with the people for the amount of time where I'm not going to get tired or resentful and where I get to be part of the progress they make. So having the audacity to make those choices is what makes our business sustainable.

G: And acknowledging that that's a process to get there.

H: 100%. 100% and yes, absolutely. I don't think anybody can start off being really, really selective. Not unless you want to be in your car crying because all of your credit cards failed.

G: Trying to buy medication for your baby right.

H: You work towards it but I think it's a really wonderful goal to have and to know ahead of time when I reach this milestone, when I'm making this amount of monthly revenue, when I'm able to pay myself this amount every month, when I can hire an assistant, when I can, whatever, that I will start putting boundaries in that allow me to do less of the things that drain me and more of the things that make my brain light up for a Christmas, like a Christmas tree. But for the people that are listening who feel like, you know what, I feel called out. I've stayed all the way through this conversation. I have been hiding behind my credentials and my expertise. I have drank the whole Kool Aid trough of just do good work and you will be noted and found and discovered and paid. It's time for me to learn how to develop my story EQ, my brand. It's time for me to show up in my business in a way that's going to get me found and paid. What's the very first move?

G: The very first move, I think is really about saying it's okay. It's okay that you're at the point that you're at. It's okay that you're 50 and you're not where you felt like you should be. It's okay that you've started this company and failed multiple times. It's okay like it's all okay and it doesn't mean okay doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. Okay doesn't mean you haven't impacted other people. But if you can get to a point where you can at least consciously say, I'm not going to hold on to the shame of whatever has gotten me to this point in time. Because hopefully from this conversation you can realize that it is much more than a you problem.This is neuroscience. This is psychology. This is corporate conditioning.

This is social conditioning. There are multitudes of things that have led to this moment, many of which are not your fault at all. What is in your control, though, is how you move forward. And so you need to make the decision to say, I want to move forward in a different way. I want to move forward in a way that says I am in control of this. Things are going to be uncomfortable and if I can notice when I'm uncomfortable and I can learn about what are the things that are fueling that discomfort in that moment, then I can keep taking literally the micro steps forward that are required in order to build a sustainable business. But you have to start if you shit on yourself from the beginning, the pile of shit will just continue to build and build and build to the point where you will feel like you are drowning. So start with the acceptance around the moment.

H: I love how so many things are anchored in radical self acceptance and from that place taking action. When you're talking about the pile of shit, my brain just flashed back to Jurassic Park with the, what is it? The triceratops poop and Laura Dern.

G: Oh yeah, totally, 100%.

H: Yeah, yeah.

G: Like you can be standing on top of that pile and if you choose not to accept that pile, if you choose to say, you know what, I'm gonna let this pile fucking be a stain on me for the rest of eternity, it will be, period. And you know what, it'll get bigger, that pile of shit, it gonna get bigger. There's gonna be more triceratops dumping so choosing to say I don't want to live in shame, that's not to say those feelings won't come up. But it is to say, overall, do I want to be shame or do I want to experience shameful moments? There's a difference, one is who you are and how you live day to day. The other is moments that you feel and then how you respond to them and that.

H: And that pass and move on. I love everything about this conversation, I'm so glad we had it. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm definitely going to be linking to your website to story eq and what social platform would you like people to connect?

G: LinkedIn is my platform of choice.

H: Thank you, friend.

G: Thank you.