We Lost It All… But This Is What Happened Next

Hello, hello, hello everyone. Um, this is new. We're on a new page. We're on a new everything. I can only go live on my personal new personal page at this point. So here we are, and we will share the heck out of this. So if you see this and you are neurodivergent like us, please share, share, share, share, share with your community because I lost mine. So quick version. I lost everything. Somebody attacked, and it was a purposeful attack. We lost everything. And for Indie Hive, this is a big deal. Why is it a big deal? Because we have Product Hunt tomorrow, and that is supposed to be fun. And they took the wind out of my sails a little bit, but they aren't winning because we are talking about community today. And let me tell you, I'm gonna try to do this part without crying. Community is everything. And holy shit, yes, I just swore. Holy shit, the last few days have definitely remi—

I knew this.

This is why I created everything here at ND Hive and DL Loud. But man, my community rocks.

Yes, we do. I, I'm gonna say that. Yes, we do.

Because freaking amazing. When one member gets attacked and something happens, man, the justice sensitivity one is pretty epic and hilarious all at the same time. I've gotten memes and things that I never thought some of the people on my team would send me, which is hilarious, and it's all good. But the help, everybody has jumped in. To help in amazing ways. And not just my team that are paid to be here, because it's not just because I'm the boss, but our community, our Indie Hive community, some members who have been here like days, really everybody has jumped in to help.

And everybody is asking still, what can we do to help to make sure this stays? Because they're even for them that have been here just a few days, they're like, this is gold for us. In fact, we had a new member yesterday that came in, and it was her first time, and she stayed most of the day. And at the end, she said, I have gotten so much done. Thank you so much for helping me to see that there's a place for me to go.

Our whole entire mission here at ND Hive and the Out Loud is. Never do life alone, any part of life alone.

Right.

Uh, this morning we had somebody come in, in her complete and total chaos, to fold laundry. That's all she was there for, and then she was gone. We have people that come in to do their dishes, come in to eat lunch, come in to get their paperwork done. We have somebody that successfully just finished one of their university courses and is so excited because now we're going to be there from the beginning of her next Set of classes instead of just helping her recover from struggling from the first half of her semester. So she's so excited now.

Yeah. Yeah.

And we have professors and we have accountants and we have, like, we have people in that work in the hospital systems and we have nurses, we have moms, we have other entrepreneurs, we have authors. We have quite a few authors recently. It's been very cool to see all the authors. And I got to join them too, like, as an official author, just in the last couple of weeks. It's so cool to see the brains that we get in our community.

Well, and my sister called me yesterday while I was in the middle of body doubling, and she's like, what exactly do you do? And at that moment, I needed to do a quick check-in because we were doing a quick check-in for some of them. And I said, hold on, I'm gonna you know, just be quiet. And so I did the check-in and she got back on and I said, so now you understand who they are. And she goes, yes, you guys have a gamut from like stay-at-home moms that need help with the day-to-day tasks clear up to corporate professionals. I mean, and everything in between. And she goes, that's really cool. Because the reality is, is that neurodivergence, ADHD, AuDHD is not just for This little bit of people, you know, it's not like it's all in one group.

We're not all the little boys in the back of the classroom.

Right? And, and just the, the joy of being able to help somebody make that connection of they're not broken. That is gold. So much gold. In fact, we had that happen last week with someone. And I felt bad at first because they burst into tears. But you know what? It was the first time I think that person felt truly validated for who they were, not what they did. And so their worth was starting to change of who their identity of who they were, instead of their identity coming from all the things that they did for other people. Which we get stuck in a lot.

And I, I think I know who you're talking about. I ended up hopping on with her later in the evening. She's like, there are others like me. She's like, I've never talked to anybody else who just understands and doesn't judge me immediately.

Well, and that's part of the, the community, Danielle. There was another lady that was in there at the same time, and She started talking to her directly. It wasn't just me, it was her too. And that is testament right there of what the hive really is. When we're in there, we're in together for all the little things. It's not just for, oh my gosh, I'm coming in in crisis. It's, I, I, I hear you, I see you, I understand you. How can I help you?

It's— everybody wants to help. We obviously— every call, like right now, we have 3 coaches on a call right now. Well, one of them would kill me for calling her a coach. We have 2 coaches and my personal assistant on a call right now. And we're always there. We're there to support. Everybody that comes in. But the cool part, what, what you were just saying, is watching the other community members jump in with advice and help. And everybody has a story. We're neurodivergent. We all have a story to go with whatever somebody's talking about.

Oh yeah.

And they feel free to share them instead of masking and not, which we're taught to do in the corporate world or out in the real world. They don't want to hear our stories. They They feel like we're trying to one-up them by sharing our personal story that relates to theirs. There's none of that around here, and I love it because that's how we learn.

Yes. Yes. And, and it was interesting because I was visiting my mom, and my mom has dementia, but the things that she remembers— and she asked me, like, how are you doing? What are you doing? What are you up to? And of course, I've probably repeated it multiple times, but when I told her About Indie Hive and our community and all the things. She just said, oh, that sounds so nice. It would have been nice to have something like that when I was younger. And it would have been because as a mom of 6 kids back then, you know, 30— I'm not gonna tell you how old I am, but— oh yeah, well, I'm 54. So on the 2nd. So we're talking 60 years of marriage. With not the support in the way that, that she needed it to be able to say, hey, you're normal doing that. You don't have to put a mask on to pretend. And that part is huge in seeing that we can do that now.

It's— well, not— I mean, this is why I created it. My son is 28-something. Sorry, Michael. Matt, I don't feel so bad because my neurodivergent son doesn't know how old he is. So, like, I only go—

Well, then we're good.

We're good. He doesn't even know his own birthday. Okay. So I'm safe there. I'm in safe mom territory. We get each other. He's 28, and I needed this when he was little, and that was before Zoom. I mean, we had Skype back then, sort of. Like, sort of.

That was, yeah, interesting.

There was chat rooms. There weren't video calls. There weren't ways for us to do what we do now. This would have been life-changing for me as a corporate— I was in corporate then— mom failing with a neurodivergent toddler with not enough information on autism and ADHD and all of that. It's definitely not the combination of autism and ADHD.

Right.

Uh, hearing from doctors that I was crazy, that there was nothing wrong with me. I still at that point had a mentally retarded diagnosis, so therefore I was not to be trusted at a doctor's office. Um, coming in with my kid that was insane, nobody wanted to listen to me. If I would have had a community of other women and moms to go to, right, it would have been huge. And for me, it was— I went to a talk At a local college from— and I think it's right here even. I got a new copy of it. I got to stop lending these out. This woman, Carol Stock Kranowitz. And she was life-changing for me. She made me feel safe. She made me feel seen and heard and not insane like every doctor in my life was and in my son's life was.

But it was the knowledge. It was the capability of having a tool.

I had a tool.

Yeah. You know, there's— it's funny you brought that up because— and this book's out of print, so I'm trying to connect with the author. But this was the first book that helped me actually understand my son's ADHD because I didn't know I had it. And we were doing this all the time.

And now we have Just in my community, we have these 2 books for people with disabilities. This is mine. This is Dr. Portia's. And we have other books. And we have Dr. Jessica, who wrote a dissertation that I wrote a book on her dissertation with my friend Christy. There are so many resources for us. And in our community, like I said, in our community alone, we have 2 books on this.

Well, and here's, here's part of that too, is that we are in a community that actually has credibility. It's not just somebody's thoughts. These are people that are researching it and looking into it and saying, here, here's the information that you haven't been able to get a hold of.

Look, look, it's here to us. Yeah.

We'll share.

We'll tell. We'll, we'll help. We'll support you. We'll find the tool for you. And, and I think that is one of the coolest things that I've gotten to do in the last 30-something years in what I do, because I keep saying 25 years. And my husband— I said that on a call the other day, one day last week, and my husband, he knew who I was talking to, thank God, yelled across the hall because he works across the hall and he better shut up right now and not input anything. Yells across the hall, it's more than 30 years now, you know. Shut up. 25 years.

A whole lot of shush for you.

25 years plus, sounds better, of working with neurodivergent brains. I am a neuro— and I have 50 years of me being neurodivergent.

Which, you know, the thing is, is that we really have to start looking in places that have valid information, that have— I don't want to say credibility because it's not even that. We do have credibility. We live it every day. But that we actually are here to help. It's not for us to get. It's not for us to, to gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. It's how can we help? How can we help you? How can we help you learn? How can we teach you? How can we give you the skills? And Danielle, I'm so excited for tomorrow.

And so because of all of this, because of all of this experience, because I've read every book I think I may have missed a few at this point because the last few years I've been building other things, so I haven't been reading other people's books. But with all of my education, my 2 degrees, getting my PhD in behavioral psychology, all of my certifications, all of that, I started to put together what we're launching tomorrow. I mean, we soft launched it to our audience.

Mm-hmm. 2 weeks ago, almost 2 weeks ago.

So I launched it to our audience weeks ago and we got 58 people immediately who have joined, all who have stayed. A lot of people who— we had one person that was on a 7-day trial who just decided it wasn't for them. They didn't even come in. They never used the community. They never showed up for the Bible body doubling. They just decided they didn't like it. Sight unseen. Great.

No problem. Right.

And 58 people joined us from that. So tomorrow, Product Hunt. Tomorrow we're launching on Product Hunt. And Product Hunt, you're gonna see more information. I put a little bit of information out on a post earlier. I'm not gonna explain it all, but that's gonna be huge for us to reach a bigger audience, to maybe get some investors, people paying attention to us. And really showing that the neurodivergent community does have the tools they need. And it's not about, um, it's not about, uh, just another piece of software because it is software. It's productivity, it's managing emotions, tracking emotions, tracking your type of day you're gonna have, your energy levels, all of those things. But it's about execution and community. in the community, in the execution, the space to take action in a supported area with 10+ hours a day of live coaching is what we're launching tomorrow. And I'm so excited.

I am so excited. I'm so excited to see how it is and the energy that we bring to— that we bring to the community. And I'm not talking about, like, we come in and we act all crazy or anything. I'm talking about the energy of calmness sometimes. Sometimes we need the energy of like, hey, let's have a little bit of fun. And then there's other times where we need to, you know, just kind of create that safe space, let somebody verbalize it, because we have, you know, those that verbalize externally and those that verbalize internally, and we have a place for both.

And well, and we even have deaf and hard of hearing members who may not verbalize at all and only handle things via ASL and text message. That's fine. We have all of those abilities. We have transcription always available for everybody, for those of us with auditory processing disorders, or closed captioning for those deaf, hard of hearing, auditory processing disorders.

Mm-hmm.

We try to create an inclusive space as possible for everyone. And if I haven't created something that needs to be more inclusive, please just tell me. I will make it that way. I will figure it out. It may take me a little while because I have to figure it out, but I will figure it out because we want this space to be inclusive. space to be as inclusive as possible to everyone. If you're neurodivergent, if you are overwhelmed, if you have chronic illness, if you're just a mom who's tired, come join us.

Mm-hmm.

If you're in perimenopause, you have a lot of us, uh, come join us because we have the space for you where you're safe, you're seen, you're heard, and create your own hive. Because man, when the hive needs support, you've got it. So if you're looking for us tomorrow, you wanna know more information tonight, tomorrow morning, tonight. I don't know how you explain that. At midnight tonight, join podcast.com and search for Indie Hive and come have conversations. I'm gonna be answering questions, talking to people. I'll be there for 24 hours straight. No, I'm not kidding. Come join me. Keep me awake. And we're offering a free 24-hour Marathon coaching session.

That's going to be amazing. Come with your questions, everyone, because sometimes you don't know what you don't know. So come and bring in the questions because when Danielle's in there and some of our other coaches are in there supporting her, we can give you the information that you're looking for. We can give you those steps or processes to try out. And we all know that we're not the same. So come in, check us out at Product Hunt tomorrow, and check out the Indie Hive because you want to be part of that hive.

I can't wait. I can't wait. Have an amazing day everywhere, and happy St. Patty's Day. And yes, I'm all in pink, but I'm not Irish. So have a good one, everybody.