The ADHD Skills Lab

Your ADHD Productivity Might Actually Be Perfectionism (Here's How to Tell with Dani Donovan)

• Skye Waterson • Season 1 • Episode 167

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0:00 | 38:06

You built something people love. Running the business of it is a different problem entirely.

Dani Donovan is the creator of The Anti-Planner, a self-published ADHD productivity workbook that generated over $1 million in its first year and has now sold more than 115,000 copies with a 4.9-star rating. She built it without a business plan, without onboarding documents, and without a team that had done any of this before.

In this conversation, Dani explains how a single ADHD comic from 2018 nearly never got posted, how a business coach’s field guide exercise became the product she actually needed, and what happened when she had to tell 28,000 pre-order customers their books were running late.

We also get into the part nobody warns you about: what hiring looks like when there are no SOPs, no infrastructure, and no clear handoff between the creative work and the operational side of the business.

This is a conversation about the hidden cost of scaling creative ADHD-led businesses — and why building the thing is often easier than building the systems around it.

What We Cover:

  • How Dani designed The Anti-Planner around what she actually used instead of what productivity systems were “supposed” to look like
  • Why she turned down traditional publishing and protected creative control over the product
  • The pre-order strategy that generated 42,000 orders across two launches
  • What happened when she had to email 28,000 customers about delayed orders — and why almost nobody asked for refunds
  • Why scaling an ADHD-led business gets operationally difficult long before it looks successful from the outside

Connect with Dani Donovan:

If you’re an entrepreneur with ADHD who’s tired of being asked “Why don’t you just hire/make a system/delegate?”  We’ve gotchu! 

  1. Click here for a free copy of my 5-year-tested Focus Filter. Instant relief for work-related overwhelm.
  2. Find out what’s holding you back. I’ll personally build you a simple plan to fix it. Click here to grab one.
  3. Join my Focused Balanced Growth Program. If you’re tired of getting blank looks in masterminds full of neurotypical advice, this is for you. Weekly Monday Motivation sessions, plus content you can binge or dip into for strategies specific to you. Apply here.
  4. Your Business Operations Built for Your ADHD Brain. Feel like you can never really delegate because you can’t explain how to do it? Struggling to hire someone who feels like a natural fit for your business? Let us handle it for you. We specialize in using our years of ADHD research and practical support to act as your fractional COO, handling the back-end operations in a way that feels light and keeps you focused. Learn more here.
SPEAKER_00

One of the biggest things for me from an ADHD standpoint was I don't want anyone to tell me I can't do something. I didn't want someone telling me I can't put that stuff in here. So I've got a real like independent streak of not liking being told that I can't do things.

SPEAKER_01

Hello everyone, and welcome to the ADHD Skills Lab. Today we are joined by the wonderful Danny Donovan, who is a multifaceted internet content creator, public speaker, and ADHD comic artist known for super viral content and comics that have amplified ADHD awareness and acceptance online. She's also the author of The Anti-Planner and the founder of the Anti-Boring Project, where she leverages her expansive social media following to make everyday challenges like productivity and organization much more achievable and entertaining. Danny, it's so great to have you here. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, yeah, 100%. So tell me, you know, obviously you started creating comics and you started, you know, sharing your ADHD experiences. When was your first, the first comic that you made for ADHD? You know, take me back to that moment.

SPEAKER_00

So the first comic that I did started was my ADHD storytelling comic. And so it's sort of it's got the like how I tell stories and you know, this or how other people tell stories. Non-ADHD people tell stories with start of story and end of story. And then the how my ADHD tells stories. It's pre-story, prologue, beginning of story, and then all of these like twists and turns until you get to end of story, and then after end of stories, like apologize. And so I made this as an inside joke with one of my friends when I worked as a graphic designer at Gallup. So I sent it to her because we joked about my like train of thought conductor being like very bad at his job. And and so I sent this along and she goes, Oh my god, it's so you! And I was like, I I know I made it. And and I wasn't gonna post it online because my boss followed me on Instagram and I hadn't told my boss I had ADHD. And so I she was like, You can just post it on Twitter because you've only got like 600 followers, so like you'll be it'll be fine.

SPEAKER_01

No one will notice this.

SPEAKER_00

No one will notice. And Aaron Brooke, who's who has, you know, had a very like large ADHD kind of like audience, retweeted it. And so it just like reached its exact niche audience very, very quickly. And so it was just like popping off, taking off people in the comments who were feeling like seen and were like, why am I crying? Right. They're like apologize at the end and kind of like kicked them in the gut. And so I didn't have a Patreon, like I was not planning on this being a thing that I did for work or even necessarily making this into a series initially. It was really the first one just took off because people felt so seen. It was like an experience that I think so many of us are familiar with, but it hadn't really been like maybe documented quite like that before. And so I had so many people asking, where's your Patreon? Where's your Patreon? I would love to, you know, see more of this.

SPEAKER_01

Where's your comic web series? You clearly have. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. And I was like, oh, I guess that that's what I I guess that that's what I'll do next. And so I started a Patreon and then started kind of like making this public art therapy collection and merging that with my data visualization that I've been doing as a graphic designer at Gallup. So I was thinking about, I was thinking in infographics like all day. And so being able to sort of like translate that with my visual design degree was was pretty helpful.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. And I I feel like often, you know, I have clients who work in different areas and have ADHD, and I find that we do tend to think in infographics as a general rule. So I feel like that's a really nice way of communicating to an ADHD audience something that's funny but also relatable.

SPEAKER_00

And I think that the thing that gets a lot of people is that like how to interpret those types of charts or you know, pie charts, or how how to read this stuff is universal. Like my stuff has been translated to a bunch of different languages, but the the interpretation of of how I'm supposed to read this is there for a lot of people. And so I think it's been a really interesting and effective means of communicating those ideas because like people are then able to connect the dots versus like reading an article or reading a book doesn't quite hit the same as I'm interpreting this chart and oh, I get what this is trying to say.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Also from a working memory and dopamine intersection standpoint, like you've got one thing, you're looking at it, you get it, it kind of communicates a lot because images do that, especially those kinds of images. And then from a dopamine perspective, it's like it didn't take long to take on board. And then from a sharing perspective, it's like, wow, I just hit share, and now suddenly something that I've been trying to explain to family and friends and people for ages is now just fully explained for them. And so that that trifictor, I think, is so much a part of what you do.

SPEAKER_00

So this was I I didn't you asked a very direct question at the beginning, which was when? And this was so this was December 2018. And so this was well before there were other people making like ADHD ADHD content creator. This was pre- this was like well pre-COVID. And and so the only like ADHD content creator that I was familiar with at the time was Jessica McCabe, who has the How to ADHD YouTube channel. And now Jessica's like one of my best friends, so it's like crazy how things have sort of like worked out because I remember seeing her content and crying because over this video saying why laundry was hard, and and it was this first time I'd felt so validated in someone being like this thing you struggle with that you've never had anyone validate like this is hard because of this thing that you got diagnosed with a while ago, but you only think of how it impacts you as far as work goes or as far as school went. You don't think about it in your life about how it makes hygiene hard or how it makes you know laundry hard or how it makes getting your oil changed hard. You don't necessarily think about ADHD in those terms until someone sort of like sets it in front of you, you know?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I got diagnosed around about the same time, and I remember looking for the same information. I was like, okay, cool, so now what do I do? Because they give you the n the name. We think you have ADHD, and then you're kind of just left with that. You have to ask a Google at the time. And so take me through then. Tell me about how you went from I post something on Twitter. It goes viral. People ask me if I have a Patreon. I don't have a Patreon to having a business. Like, what does that shift look like practically?

SPEAKER_00

So it was really interesting because I had a plan and then my plan got like so disrupted so quickly. Um in in a shocking, in a shocking turn of events, things did not turn out as I thought they were going to. And so I had decided to quit my job at Gallup, which was really difficult for me because I've genuinely like really liked working there and liked my coworkers a lot. And and I ended up doing it because I started getting so many speaking engagements that I was like taking time away from work, and it's like you can only there's a limit to how many of those you can do and have a full-time job, right? And so being able to make that space for like, okay, there's something that I want to have more of in my life, and I'm currently like not able to get it because of you know these circumstances. And I had enough money from Patreon to pay my bills. I finally definitely did the math on like, okay, I'm gonna stop avoiding finances for long enough to like figure out how much my monthly you know thing is, and being able to look at that, and I lived in Omaha, Nebraska at the time, and the cost of living was like so so cheap. Um, and so comparison, you know, compared to Atlanta now. But being able to know, okay, I think I can cover this, I've got a you know, bit in savings because up to that point I had been saving all of my Patreon money in an account that I couldn't touch and continuing to live off of my full-time job money, like like like not changing my lifestyle too much, and and being kind of like in this one place and being like, that is eventually quit my job money. And so being able to have that was was, I guess, really helpful. But I put it in, put it my two weeks' notice, went through, had my last day, and that was at February 28th, 2020, was my last day. And then two weeks later, right? I'm like, I got this uh co-working space, I got this desk, I'm like totally gonna crush making ADHD comics. And then it was like, I went into the office and nobody was there. And I'm not very good at checking my email. And so I did not see that they had sent an email that's like COVID shutdown, don't come into the office. So I was like in the office by myself, not even knowing that we were supposed to be there. And and so I had this rush of panic, like people are gonna l losing jobs, like are not able to go in. I, people's my Patreon's gonna dry up, and I just left my job. And so I was really, really concerned about that. But then on the flip side, what ended up happening was I was very worried about like, oh my God, I'm about to quit my job and work by myself at home, and it's gonna be so lonely because I'm gonna miss all my coworkers. And suddenly everyone was remote. And I'm like, all right, I'm not, you know, I'm not alone in this boat. But being able to then go to the space of the number of people who were now trapped at at home who lost their structure. And it turns out that so many people I think were getting diagnosed during the pandemic because suddenly these ADHD symptoms were so much more apparent when the system that you'd been used to having in place isn't there anymore. And so then my comics ended up, and the anti-planner ended up finding their audience very quickly because people were at home on their phones, like on their phones a lot more often with fewer social plans and being able to do that.

SPEAKER_01

Sorry, that was a long time. No, no, that's a great, great. I mean, I started well, I didn't start it with my business. I was working in schools teaching about ADHD just on the side of being an academic. And then when COVID hit, obviously they were like, we don't want need you anymore. Don't come in, don't come into the schools. And and it was the same thing. I was like on the internet being like, hey, does anyone else want this? Like, I've been doing it in schools. And so that was it was I looking back now, I would be curious on your thoughts, but I feel like it was almost an ADHD boom during that time.

SPEAKER_00

There really was, because it was also the rise of TikTok. And so ADHD TikTok, oh my god, ADHD TikTok and ADHD like Twitter just like hit so different. Um, because they're short form idea spread. Like it's an idea spreading or a joke spreading, like it's very small content, and it's usually focused on things that people can relate to versus on like things like Facebook and Patreon or Facebook and Instagram. People might be seeing, oh, here's my kids' first day of school, right? And so those platforms specifically, I think, are so I'm gonna say ADHD friendly, but like are the types of content that that go down real easy. And so I had a lot of fun making TikToks because that was also how I was connecting to people during the pandemic, was like sharing these experiences and then people in in the comments because we weren't, I wasn't seeing anyone. And so it ended up being developing TikTok. Like TikTok was my next kind of big thing and during the pandemic. And then right after that, I had like this big boom on like Twitter where like all my tweets were going viral. And so I was able to then kind of have this strategy of I don't have a sound cloud, but if you struggle with this thing that this tweet is about, you might like my book, The Antiplanner. I'm taking pre-orders. And so being able to like sort of utilize the organic momentum of I had noticed my stuff was was taking off. This feels like a good time to like have a thing to promote.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's very, very impressive. I I'm curious, like, you know, this idea of taking pre-orders and getting a Patreon, like that's really business savvy. Did you have a mentor? Like, how are you figuring this stuff out?

SPEAKER_00

So I had a business coach, but my business coach was a lot less um of the like, here's what you should do, because she knows me, you know, tell me what I should do. And my brain's like, I was gonna do that, but now I don't want to anymore. Um and and so, but she really had me get in touch with like how it was that I was feeling. And so it was really interesting. I'm so glad you asked this question. I've actually never told anyone this before. I I just unlocked, I just unlocked something, which was that my business coach told me, okay, it'd be really good for you to make a field guide, which is like a little notebook of like all the things you're learning about your business, all the things you're learning about yourself, all of the things when you're figuring out your goals or you're you're learning about something and you're thinking about how it applies to your business. You put all of that in one spot. And so I loved this idea. I got myself one of those like A6 or A5 binders that you can like uh take the pages out and put new pages in. And so I had started making stuff the excuse list, right? Because I had started working on my comics and decided I wanted to make an ADHD friendly planner. It started out as just being kind of like a little snarky, like a planner, but with like lettering that's snarky. And a lot of people think that that's what it's that's what it is. And like to be to be fair, for a little while, that's what it was going to be. But what ended up happening is I was using my field guide that my business, my business coach did not tell me what to put in it, other than, and I ended up using it as this place to like uncover my why. That's like, what do I want? Why? What do I want? Why? What do I want? Why? And and sort of putting that through and doing what are the excuses I make for myself for why I can't do comics. Oh, I don't have time. And it's like, what is another reframe? It's like I am choosing not to make time for, you know, intentionally choosing not to make time for this, and some reframes there. And and then I realized that I started doing like theme weeks of where I am gonna, this is finance week. I made this cool like lettering header and said, I'm gonna do 10 things related to finance this week. I don't care if one of those things ends up being checked my bank account. I will do 10 things in this category. And when I get to 10 things, I will be huzzah, like what a successful week, right? And I started doing stuff like that and sort of looked at this and went, this is what I'm using to get stuff done. I'm not using this planner that I'm trying to develop. I'm using this. This is where the money is, this is where the gold is, this is what I need because this is what I'm already using.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I love that. I love that. So so you didn't decided, okay, we're gonna make this a book. Now I know a little bit. I followed somebody called Fran, who's an artist, and she made a book and she talked a little bit about the complexities of that. So I know that's not an easy thing to do, like making and shipping a book.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, it turns out because then you also have to like run a business. So like most people who make books don't have to don't find themselves suddenly being like an e-commerce business owner. You know, it's like a direct-to-consumer uh business that's like you have, you know, it's like who's doing your customer service, babe, you know, and and and all of these sudden problems. I knew so little about what what I was taking on when I started this. I just knew I want to make something, I'm capable of making something, and I know where to find a printer. And everything else will just fair, how hard can it be? Boys do it, you know, how hard can it be? Publishing houses do it. And uh this real, like, you know, I I I have always had joke that I've had that like Elle Woods mental mentality of like, what, like it's hard, uh, which has really gotten me through stuff because things are hard. This is like incredibly hard. But if I think too much in advance about how hard something's gonna be, that's where it makes it so easy to talk myself out of going for things, you know.

SPEAKER_01

And that's the benefit of ADHD. You know, we talk about the struggles, the executive functioning struggles, but you know, when you look at entrepreneurship in ADHD and you look at the research, we do have that tendency towards action, which comes with the impulsivity. And we do have that, you know, that time blindness and that working memory where we're like, write a book. Easy enough. Okay, let's do it. Like, you know, like done by the end of the week.

SPEAKER_00

And so, you know, that can be you make it 10% into this and then and then discard it because I had a new idea, and that's following that new idea will be fun because ideating is great and executing is bad.

SPEAKER_01

It is, it is, yeah. And so when we're thinking about this, it's like we do good, we're good at starting it. It's the maintaining that can be the problem, but the starting, you know, we we got this. So I'm curious for you. Okay, so you're like, how hard can it be? You know, let's do this. Let's start a book. Did you get a publisher? Did you do it yourself? Like, take me mechanically through what happened.

SPEAKER_00

I don't get to talk about this very often. So thank you for asking. Because it's like the nitty-gritty of sort of like how this came to be, which was that I knew that like this could be a really cool idea, but I know myself well enough to know I will not finish this on my own. Like, I need someone to help hold me accountable because I need someone to know and to help set deadlines so that they are real deadlines and so that I don't just like continuously make excuses for myself or put it off or like get distracted with something because I have hired someone to essentially like I initially started off as just like I want someone to project manage me. And so I had somebody who was like helping with some of this, who who had some background in self-publishing, but typically up to that point had done self-publishing through like uh Kindle direct print and not what ended up like the but when I talk about like oh publishing the book, the book is technically a pro is a product, it is a product that happens to be printed in like a book, but ultimately like I wanted to do spiral bound. What I what I did for the book was decide what things make me stop using other productivity tools. And one of the things with any kind of workbook is holding a softcover book open and writing in it. The worst, the worst, higher profit margins, terrible user experience. And so from the get-go, thinking to myself, I want to make this spiral bound, make it made it so much harder because there are that's a limitation for a lot of people, like print uh things that it's not needed enough that like that would that would help. And so I started working on it, found my own printer. I found a printer online that just like Googled. And so I uh we go through a book block, they're amazing. They have a notebook builder on their site, and so I was able to see, okay, how much would it cost for me to order this many books with this type of cover and wire binding and full color and different pages and tabs and shrink uh belly band and shrink wrapped, and you can add like little menu items and it will give you a preview of what it looks like and then how much it cost. So I was able to very quickly go, okay, if I can hit 10,000 copies sold, I can get it for this cost. I'm gonna price it like I'm only gonna sell 500 copies of this so that if I'm wrong completely out of it, right? And and so then I decided that I was like, oh, I want to do pre-orders so I can use that pre-order money to pay for the book so I don't have to take out a loan. And so I I didn't even think about the fact that like Kickstarter existed. Like I essentially did a Kickstarter without needing to provide people with perks. And that was not, you had asked, you know, was this sort of like on your own or was this your business coach? I was like, this is all just me going, this feels like what makes the most sense. Yeah, this feels like the strategic way to kind of play this. And so I ended up going kind of through that. And I was getting all of these pre-orders from, you know, hopping onto the tails of my viral posts in the way that I used to do that for my Patreon with my comics, where it's like, here's a comic. If you like my comics, join my Patreon. This was, you know, here's a joke. And then if you like this joke, you'll probably like my book. And being able to do that, getting a lot of pre-orders. I did have major publishing houses who hit me up who were like, hey, you know, we want to do this. And they sent me an you know an offer, and I sort of looked at it and I was like, This is not, this is not beneficial for me in any way.

SPEAKER_01

I sent a few offers, and this is a long contract. Those are those are deeply ingrained, built-out contracts.

SPEAKER_00

And and they'd be able to make changes, and and one of the biggest things for me from an ADHD standpoint was I don't want anyone to tell me I can't do something. If I want people to be able to open up the book and it says, holy shit, I can't believe I actually finished this in like 20% gray up at the top because I love little Easter eggs for people to find. Um, but people know immediately off the bat of like, oh, okay, like she used the book to finish the book, and I don't want uh, or or stuff at the end talking about ADHD, like, wait, do I have ADHD? And saying, you know, this is not a diagnostic tool at all. But if you feel this, this, this, this, and this, you might want to talk to somebody. I didn't want someone telling me I can't put that stuff in here. So I've got a real like independent streak of not liking being told that I can't do things.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, 100%. And it is, and also, you know, from a just from a business perspective, like often people say, Oh, well, your book, especially your first book, it's like, oh, it's not really gonna make you any money. You're not gonna like get anything from it. It's just a it's just a sort of marketing tool. But for you, it's like a marketing tool for what? Like, I'm I wanna sell the planner and then I I can sell you you get to own it in in more ways than one.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and the way that I actually I looking back, I'm so grateful for again this like the timeline of like, you know, uh, you make your own luck, that is true, but in in a lot of ways, timing, you cannot always help when things are gonna be timed really well. And I had, I was giving the closing keynote for the 2021 International ADHD conference, like the chat conference. And it was the first year it was virtual, and I knew I'm gonna have a bunch of ADHD coaches and therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists who this is something, a tool. I guess I haven't really said what this, what the antiplanner even is, but but this toolbox of over 155 different strategies on how to get stuff done when you don't feel like it. That's all broken up by like it's hard to get something done because it's overwhelming. I'll go to the overwhelm section and find some like activities that help specifically with that. I knew this was the exact market of people that I would like to be able to like give an opportunity to get pre orders. Like I had a limited, I did limited pre-orders also. I was just like, hey, uh only 10,000. So that FOMO kind of aspect did get.

SPEAKER_01

And also for you, you're like, please don't make it a million. Like, I do have to figure out how to sell this.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. And I well, I didn't expect it to take off as as well as it did. And I was doing like beta testing and stuff like that to sort of like generate interest and get emails so that when I did launch it, I did then have a list of people who are sort of like waiting for it who were able to test activities and give me feedback for free. And so being able to have those things sort of like click into place and having that deadline, having I'm giving a talk at this time with the right audience. I have been working on this over here. I need to be able to do pre-orders, launch pre-orders by this talk. Because if I can do that, there's a real deadline, there's a real incentive for me to have it done. And so it like kicked my ass into gear to where I didn't mosey around in the way that I often mosey when I do not have any sort of external deadline.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So you you set that task on fire. I'm like, for sure.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. And and I I will say that so it was my first pre-order, and I had never contributed to a Kickstarter before. So I had I didn't know that things run behind, that that's like a thing that happens to people who pre-order things are are often like used to things taking longer than expected. But the book took way longer than expected because A, it was during COVID, and so shipping ended up. I was gonna do air shipping, but it was gonna cost more to ship the book than the price of the book. So that was kind of a no-go. But I also got so perfectionistic about it because I saw how many people were pre-ordering it and I looked at what I was making and went, I can do better than this. This is clearly going to like reach a ton of people. I might as well like give this my absolute like portfolio level best. And that ended up making it take seven months longer.

SPEAKER_01

It's such a classic ADHD thing to do, by the way. Make more work for ourselves. Yeah, we're like, we do that with emails and then we do that with books. We're like, oh well, I said I would give them this thing, and it's it's a week late, so let's make it 500 times bigger.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, let's make it bigger. And so being able to really like have that. I have a little comic that went out. So, like at so I did do like delay emails, and one of the things that was the biggest challenge that was really like embarrassing for me was having to send out this email to people telling them that the book I had to ended up having to do two delay emails and having to tell them that the book was delayed and and to deliver bad news to at this point, I had actually taken, I did first batch of pre-orders, the second batch. I had ended up getting like 42,000 pre-orders, but I I got to I think where I had like 28,000 or something. I had to send out an email to 28,000 people and be like, I know I took your money, but I this is running behind, and I'm so sorry. And I came at it from this really transparent angle of okay, so I here's what happened. And I I really did sort of like detail. Here's the issue with what's going on with the shipping, and here is I'm making the book better. Here are the before and afters. And I had pictures of what the spread of what the pages would have looked like if I wasn't taking longer, and here's what the pages are looking like now, all redesigned, and the stark difference. Not that I had to justify it to people, but people, I didn't get negative emails really from people. I had a, I had a couple people who did refunds. I think we had out of 28,000 people, we had like 11 people, I think, ask for refunds. And more than anything, I got a bunch of emails from people saying, Thank you so much for sharing how much shame you felt. Like it felt like I was writing this email. It felt like I'm listening to someone who feels really bad but wants to make sure that they're understood and explaining the process for people who don't understand how you know e-commerce or something like this works. So it was a really difficult thing that I then ended up pairing with like, also, I'll give you one PDF per week from the book to make up for it running late. And that ended up working out really well because people then were interacting with the book in little teeny chunks instead of getting it and having one all at the same time. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01

That's so cool. And now, fast forward to today, I want to know, I want to take a different tack. Tell me how what your um revenue spread. Because obviously we're a we're a business ADHD business podcast. So we talk about things like this all the time. But you know, what percentage of your revenue is now coming from books versus speaking versus other things for you today?

SPEAKER_00

I would say it's like 97% book. Yeah, so this has now done well over, I think we're about to hit 115,000 copies sold. And so it has been really helpful because word of mouth wise, it like people buy it, they love it, they get one for friends, or they buy it, they love it, they they show other people it. And so it's been able to really grow from there. But it, or getting it on Amazon, getting it on TikTok. So there's the percentage of how much Amazon has has fed into it versus TikTok fed into it versus website fed into it is I think probably the the biggest. But it's still what it's still one, you know, sort of one product in one basket. And we also have like PDFs, I do like PDFs also, and so that's still part of it. But the anti planner, I'm so excited to make more stuff, but stabilizing even just one product when you don't have a business background, when you don't know what you're doing, when you're like hiring people and you don't know how to know if they're doing their job right or not, because you don't know how to do their job, I think is really some of the biggest challenges that I've now kind of stumbled into with that with doing this.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Oh, let's let's talk about hiring. Oh my God. This is not like any ADHD. I can tell you like this is very different from my other ADHD podcasts. So I want to know, take me through like what does that process? Like, what was it like to hire your first person?

SPEAKER_00

Oh my God. I am so I am I would say like the worst person to talk to about hiring. But then probably not because I will be let me go ahead and be very relatable here. Hiring is like the hardest part for me, and I avoid it, even though it will like make things better, help me see my goals through. When I have had like bad experiences with things, or if I have had things that have not like ended how I hoped they would, and I ended up having to like, you know, end someone's contract or or pivot, and I didn't see very high like ROI on this, and because I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't have a business partner. And so for a long time it was just like, okay, who's handling daily ops or like keeping the books flowing and making sure that books are going out and that customers are happy? And I was the whole marketing machine, and so I constantly felt like I don't have time to hire people. I'm too busy being on the treadmill over here. And then when I did hire people, I didn't have here's how I do onboarding, here's how I do, here's the training materials, or here's the structure for the thing that I need you to do. It's like bringing on someone and going, this doesn't exist yet. I need someone who's gonna help me build a department that doesn't exist yet. And that's so challenging because I have been going off of just recommendations from people who didn't have experience in the exact thing that who I liked their personality or I really, really like liked them as a person and they had a figure-outer attitude and they were willing to wear multiple hats. And so that's what we really had for a while. There was a lot of like Swiss Army knives, but I did not do the thing where you have a specialized position and you kind of like post it and you have, you know, people's people sort of come in. I I mean I did that, I guess I did that twice, but both of those times did not end up working out well. So it's it was challenging because I felt like so much of this is on me that after people even start, that am I setting them up for failure because I don't know how to manage other people's workloads? I don't know how to make sure other people are doing their jobs. And so hiring for me has been really difficult because it's not just about hiring, it's like, what are you gonna do once they're here, babes? You know, do you have time to to figure out what to do and tell them what to do and how you want them to do things and stop everything else you're doing? So Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

No, and I get that. I mean, we've we've just launched uh an Invisible Systems, which is an operational side of what we do where we help you hire and help you build the SOPs and the operational stuff for an ADHD business. So that's what we do because because this is a this is a thing. And so that's why I, you know, I think it's it's great that you're talking about this and it is so relatable because I think for a lot of people, they're like, this is my brain, these are my ideas. Okay, let's make it like how do we how do we make this exist in an operational way?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Well, and especially so I, you know, we a lot of people joke about this, but it's like you're building an airplane while you're in the air. I had to scale so like this this book made over a million dollars, like in its first year, and it was started like compounding kind of like on that, but the the the quantity of what was going out, and we started international. I don't know why we did, I don't know why we did that. That was actually like very much hard.

SPEAKER_01

It's not hot at all. How hard did it be, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And God, top my toxic trait. But being able to see, you know, zooming out, like what is it that we're actually doing, and it scaled so fast that I did not have the infrastructure in place that was like ready to keep up with how much work this was gonna be. And so I did not have that in in place. So I was trying to make sure that I had, again, because I did not have specialized people who had past experience doing what I was having them do, things would take longer because we had to figure out how to do it. And then by the time we maybe started to get a system in place, those people now aren't working here anymore. Now we have to start over. And so it sort of kept feeling like I had this carrot in front of my face that's like, eventually I'm gonna get back to making comics, eventually I'm gonna get back to making anti-planner content, eventually I'm gonna because eventually I'm gonna be able to work on the stuff I'm good at and not this operational stuff trying to, you know, figure that out. And gets a little like discouraging after you kind of feel like I just need to make it like I feel like I can see the next step, and the next step is relief and until you kind of get up on that step with those people that you do truly feel like, oh my god, this is completely business changing, you know. Yeah, it's yeah, 100%. How do I get how do you get there?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people in the who are listening are like nodding.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Oh, it's so especially for people who like didn't plan, I would say like didn't plan on making a business, but like a lot of people when they make, I feel like you either have a business plan and you, you know, come at it with this like, I've already thought all this through, and here's how I'm gonna do this stuff, and now I've got these pieces in place, uh the foundation to work on. I've got a skeleton of something already here, versus being, you know, again, not knowing how to build it, but building it when it's already starting to morph. And, you know, you have an issue come up, like I had counterfeit books that that suddenly popped up that now I had people, they had retyped everything. Overseas counterfeiters had retyped everything, and there were there are 10 typos a page. They scanned all my illustrations, they printed it on like a super thin see-through paper, and so there are all of these scam listings, and so everybody has to, on such a small team, drop everything and go put out a fire. And so then you're trying to always kind of make up for and get back to all that time that you left from from the issue that popped up. So I think people running small teams with little to no experience managing people or or running teams and being like, I should probably take some management training.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, somebody needs to. Yeah. It is interesting. It's and and I think it, yeah, it's the it's the next, you know, when we talk to business owners, it's like the first step is like, I want to make the thing. And then the second thing is like, okay, I made the thing. Now how do I how do I grow it in a way that doesn't make me want to quit the thing? You know, you got cash flow and burnout, those are the two. You gotta keep those in line.

SPEAKER_00

And doing what it is you're good at, like doing what it is that you're good at, the value that I bring to the team is absolutely not the job. Like when you're Jose, when you've got yourself into a job that you're not good at, and therefore you my confidence starts to get shot because I'm I'm used to feeling like I'm good at what I'm doing. And it even when I do technically have time, when I'm like, oh, I don't have time to do, you know, make comics, it's like that's actually not true at all. I'm spending so much mental energy on admin and on, you know, stuff that that drains me so much faster that the even though there might be fewer hours doing it, you're spending your fuel on the stuff that it takes to keep the lights on.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, 100%. What is the achievement that you feel like you're most proud of looking back?

SPEAKER_00

So the achievement, the hundred, the hundred thousand books while being at a 4.9 star review rating was like having those two pieces like next to each other, like seeing those two pieces next to each other and knowing that they are both true and accurate is the most validating thing in the world because I'm sitting here like I did such a I did such a good job now. Um but but but knowing I spent an in so the whole thing's like illustrated, right? And it's like a 328 pages and and the everything kind of looks different, and I really wanted to make it so engaging and different than anything anybody had seen. Had so much fun making it, but it wasn't I I spent almost like 3,000 hours making it and like all the way up through like self-publishing it, and no publisher in their right mind would have let anybody work on, you know, work on something that that long. And so being able to have the achievement of like that level of effort that went into it paid off, as well as knowing how helpful, like just being able to read the reviews and know how many people are like, this is life-changing, or like I would have paid five times you know what I paid to get this, or this is one of the only things that has like helped me, or or like just hearing a lot of these really emotional stories too from people who needed someone to hold them by the hand and be like, your worth is not measured in productivity, but like let's help you get stuff done because you want to and not because you're afraid you have to.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I love that. And if you had a quote for your life, something that you hold on to, you share with other people, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00

I have written it down. Uh it's a little, it's a little bit long, but I promise it's worth it. I I tell this one to everybody. Um, it's an eyerglass quote that says, Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is a gap. For the first couple of years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It is trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it is normal, and the most important thing you can do is a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one story. It is only through by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take a while. It's normal to take a while. You've just got to fight your way through.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. Well, thank you so much for coming on here, Danny. Tell everyone where they can find you in your wonderful book.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, thank you, thank you. So you can find my comics and ADHD, you know, TikToks and stuff like that on adhdd.com. Antiplanner.com is where you can go check out the book and the PDFs. And yeah, and at Danny Donovan is my username on all of the platforms except Pinterest. I took too long to go to that one.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. If you liked it, leave us a five-star review. It helps other people learn more about us. And thank you so much to our wonderful team for making us sound good, look good. We couldn't do it without you.