Kelly Duffy has spent decades building companies - more than 340 of them, bought, built, and sold - and she'll tell you plainly that none of it made her successful. In this episode, she unpacks what changed after she stopped believing she was "stupid," found Human Design, and started living from unmasking rather than performance. It's a wide-ranging, unfiltered conversation about neurodivergent freedom, flow state, and what it actually takes to live gloriously unboxable.

In this episode

• Why Kelly believes success stopped being about money the moment she actually got some
• How discovering Human Design helped her unlock her own neurodivergence and let go of a label she'd carried since school
• The Landmark Forum weekend that started a decades-long relationship with self-development
• Kelly's morning routine, from oil pulling to daily meditation, and why she protects her sleep above everything else
• The "1% better" philosophy behind building and selling hundreds of businesses without burning out chasing all of it at once
• Why watching Sex and the City sent Kelly house-hunting, and what it taught her about designing an environment that actually fits
• Kelly's take on relationships, boundaries, and why she's stopped trying to change the people she loves
• A quick-fire round covering food quirks, recovery time, and what she'd change about the world for a day

Guest bio

Kelly Duffy is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and certified High Performance Coach, dedicated to helping female founders and CEOs lead with greater purpose and freedom. With experience building, buying, and selling hundreds of businesses, she combines practical strategy with a deeply human approach, shaped by decades of personal and professional development. Her goal is to help people create success rooted in wellbeing, joy, and meaningful relationships.

In this episode, Kelly also talks about Seven Elements, the community space she's building in Wimbledon Village, and how discovering Human Design helped her understand her own neurodivergence.

Find Kelly on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellyd1ufs/

Timestamps

00:00 The Hook 00:35 Meet Kelly Duffy 02:57 Who Kelly Is Today 09:56 The Landmark Forum 20:09 Following Her Energy 27:39 Success Without Fulfilment 30:28 Kelly's Morning Routine 34:18 Kelly's Edge 41:03 Longevity and Detox 44:28 Community and Connection 51:01 Designing Her Environment 58:42 Thoughts, Words, and Reality 1:01:59 The Kitchen Table 1:03:03 Redefining Success 1:04:21 Quick Fire Round 1:09:35 Boss of the World for a Day

Resources and links mentioned

• Human Design - the framework Kelly credits with unlocking her understanding of her own neurodivergence
• The Landmark Forum - the programme she names as a turning point
• Brendon Burchard's high-performance coaching system
• David Hawkins' Scale of Consciousness
• Louise Hay's morning meditation
• Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar (with the mother, organic - start with one drop and build up)
• The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama - the book that introduced Kelly to the "kitchen table" concept

The Unboxable Operating Manual

If this conversation got you thinking about your own operating system, sign up for The Unboxable Operating Manual at aniahulsman.com. The new site isn't live yet, but the moment it is, the manual lands straight in your inbox.

If this episode gave you something, a five-star review helps more gloriously unboxable humans find the show.

Jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Dr. Tara Perry has spent her whole life being right before anyone around her was ready for it. She was giving patients omega-3s before most cardiologists had heard of them. She left the hottest talent agency in Hollywood — a job everyone in LA wanted — to go and study acupuncture, and her colleagues told her she was out of her mind. Years later, at the top of a 23-year medical career, she did it again: walked away from acupuncture toward something even fewer people understood.

In this conversation, Tara and Ania talk about what it actually costs to trust your own read on things when nobody else can see what you're seeing yet — and what it takes to keep doing it anyway. Tara says her brain has always worked differently, but she doesn't identify as neurodivergent, and that's part of why this conversation matters: you don't need a label to have spent your life standing slightly outside the box everyone else was in, or to have built your work around freedom rather than fitting.

In This Episode

• What her colleagues at the agency actually said when she left to study acupuncture
• Being early to omega-3s, probiotics, bioidentical hormones and acupuncture — years before anyone else was interested
• The test she took at 14 that named something she'd been doing her whole life
• Why her brain has always worked differently, and what that's cost her socially
• Talking to the "elephant" (subconscious) rather than the "rider," and why willpower alone rarely works
• Why curiosity, not strategy, is what lets you walk to the beat of your own drum
• People-pleasing, fawning and masking — why the nicest people are often the most depleted
• How her definition of success changed, and what she'd change about the world tomorrow

Guest Bio

Dr. Tara Perry is a Hypnotherapist and Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. She specialises in Rapid Inner Transformation — helping people get to the root of their biggest block by working directly with the subconscious mind. For 25 years she has worked with celebrities, Olympians, first responders, world record holders, doctors, teachers, parents and children, and has been featured on Lifetime Television, Esquire Magazine, Fox Sports West, UCLA Bruin, and CosMed Magazine, among others. She taught for ten years at the number one acupuncture college in California and, in 2000, was chosen as the first acupuncture teacher at the Arthur Ashe Center at UCLA.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro02:10 Weird right out of the box04:17 Leaving the job everyone wanted05:02 A year in China06:15 23 years in acupuncture08:59 The elephant and the rider11:34 The test that saw it early13:49 Ania on acupuncture and jaw pain17:59 When friends don't get it20:48 Curiosity as the real driver23:46 Could she survive corporate?26:51 Seeing things before they're things30:59 Designing her environment35:25 Letting people out of prison44:02 Redefining success46:08 Quick-fire round54:00 Where to find Tara

Recommended by Tara:

• Earth Runners grounding footwear
• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
• Tara's free coherence breathing practice (~20 mins) — https://consulttara.com/library/coherent-breathing-5-5

Find Tara: consulttara.com · Podcast Dr. Tara Perry on YouTube (@drtaragraceperry) · Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok @drtaraperry · Facebook /taragperry

The Unboxable Operating Manual

If this made you think about your own operating system, the Unboxable Operating Manual is built for exactly that — working with your wiring instead of overriding it. Sign up at aniahulsman.com and it lands in your inbox the moment the new site goes live.

If it landed for you, a five-star review helps more gloriously unboxable humans find the show.

Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Bob Bazley was diagnosed with ADHD at age six, in an era before ADHD had a name, spent a decade in residential childcare, and joined the British Army at sixteen. What followed: a career digitising a million paper files at Merrill Lynch, founding an IT company on the spot when a friend's provider went under, climbing the highest peak in every European country, and building a mental health platform born partly from losing army friends to suicide.

This conversation is a masterclass in what neurodivergent pattern-recognition looks like when it's given room to run: the instinctive drive to question every "this is how it's done," the impulsive company formations that turned into eight-year businesses, and the quiet cost of being "Business Bob" when the real Bob just wants a walk in the hills. Bob and Ania talk candidly about masking, the drive toward independence that runs through every chapter of his career, redefining success away from money and title, and what it actually means to unmask after 59 years of practice.

If you've ever wondered what a gloriously unboxable mind looks like when it stops apologising for itself, this one's for you.

In This Episode

• The Merrill Lynch moment: age 27, a system nobody asked him to build, and a client wait cut from twenty minutes to under one
• Why "I already know the answer" got him in trouble for most of his career, and why he's stopped apologising for it
• What it actually felt like to say yes to a friend and form a company in the two seconds that followed
• The Euro 48 climbs with his friend Mark, and what four years on mountains did for a mind that never switches off
• "Business Bob" versus the man underneath, and what changed
• What success looks like now that it isn't measured in title or money

Guest Bio

Bob Bazley is 59 and based in Scotland. He was diagnosed with ADHD at age six, when the diagnosis itself barely existed, and spent his childhood in residential childcare before joining the British Army at sixteen, where he served six and a half years in the Royal Corps of Signals. His career since has spanned investment banking at Merrill Lynch, founding and running his own IT company for eight years, and co-founding OK Positive, a white-label mental health support platform. He's also spent four years climbing the highest peak in every European country, and now volunteers as an adult instructor with the Army Cadets.

Website: okpositive.org

Timestamps

00:00 Intro02:18 Meet Bob Bazley02:53 Diagnosed At Age Six04:45 ADHD As A Superpower07:44 The Merrill Lynch Breakthrough15:30 Retiring At 43, Then Restarting16:22 Founding A Company In Seconds28:24 Building OK Positive31:02 Mental And Physical Wellbeing33:14 Climbing 48 European Peaks40:45 Designing A Focus Environment46:39 Masking As Business Bob50:22 Redefining Success52:38 The Quick Fire Round1:03:00 Where To Find Bob1:03:57 Outro

Resources and Links Mentioned

• Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) - Bob's pick for one of the funniest films ever made.
• OK Positive (okpositive.org) - the mental health platform Bob co-founded.

Get The Unboxable Operating Manual

If today made you think about your own operating system: I'm building something for exactly that. It's called The Unboxable Operating Manual, designed to help you work with your wiring instead of constantly overriding it. My new website isn't live yet, but you can sign up right now at aniahulsman.com - the moment it launches in the next few weeks, the Manual lands straight in your inbox.

If this episode gave you something, a five-star review helps more gloriously unboxable humans find the show.

Produced by Ania Hulsman. Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Gina Conway arrived in London from California with no clients, no contacts and no reason to believe it would work - just a vision she could see clearly when nobody else could. Twenty five years later she has a salon in its twenty fifth year, a hairdressing academy, a wellness business and a manager who has been with her for nineteen of those years.

She also has idea bombs. That is her word for what happens when her brain hands her something brilliant, fully formed, at speed - and she has to find someone willing to catch it. Some of those ideas became businesses. Some of them did not. Gina is unusually clear-eyed about why: she sees what other people cannot see, and follow-through is not where she lives.

This is a conversation about building a creative life around how your brain actually works rather than how you were told it should. Gina and Ania talk about flow state behind the chair and losing all sense of time in it, about designing two-hour appointments because an hour was never really the point, about the difference between reading a room and shrinking to fit it, and about the specific cost of dimming your own light so other people feel bigger.

There is also fairy dust. Actual fairy dust. Stay for that.

In this episode

• Why a haircut with Gina takes two hours
• Idea bombs, and the team she built to catch them
• Opening a London salon on a vision nobody else could see
• Flow state behind the chair, and losing whole afternoons to it
• Making herself small so other people feel big
• Dimming your light as protection, not modesty
• Twenty six years to find the people she can be unmasked with
• Why the air feels different in California
• The three things rule, and forgiving yourself the other forty
• Why wiring only becomes strength when the conditions are there
• Becoming a day maker, and what she carries in her pocket

About Gina

Gina Conway is a hairdresser, salon owner and creative entrepreneur. Born and raised in California, she moved to London in her early thirties and opened her first salon knowing nobody in the city. It is now in its twenty fifth year. Along the way she has built and closed several businesses, founded the Gina Conway Academy, and recently opened a wellness business called The Wellness Pod. She describes herself first as a creative and second as a business person, and considers her actual job to be making people's day.

Find Gina

Salon - https://ginaconwaysalons.co.ukThe Wellness Pod - https://www.wellnesspod.co.ukAcademy - https://www.ginaconwayacademy.co.uk

Chapters

00:00 Intro02:09 Welcome Gina Conway03:10 A creative from California04:39 Twenty five years of building05:43 The moments that shaped her09:37 A salon with no clients11:40 Idea bombs and who catches them14:02 Being in the zone15:54 Ideas versus follow through18:05 Why appointments run two hours22:04 Reading the room23:54 Just a hairdresser in the room25:49 Making herself small27:12 Dimming the light to stay safe29:21 The people she unmasks with32:07 Culture and belonging35:55 Designing the day38:35 The three things rule41:53 Wide scope or narrow scope47:04 Neurodivergence as special interest48:03 Conditions make the strength50:18 The day maker51:29 The fairy dust ritual53:16 Quick fire round56:21 Shine your light without shame57:18 Outro

Mentioned

• Trello - where Gina holds her projects, on the days she uses it
• The three things rule - three tasks, phone off, first thing, then the gym
• Breathwork

Work with Ania

If this made you think about your own operating system, The Unboxable Operating Manual is built for exactly that. Sign up at aniahulsman.com and it lands in your inbox the moment the new site goes live.

https://aniahulsman.com

Enjoyed this?

A five-star review helps more gloriously unboxable humans find the show. It takes a minute and it genuinely makes a difference.

Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Natalia Forster spent 25 years helping some of advertising's biggest brands find their voice - while quietly losing her own. In this episode, Nat talks about the kindergarten teacher who spotted something different in her at five years old, decades before she had language for it, and the mentor who later made it safe for her to stop performing and lead from her actual self. That shift didn't just change how she felt at work. It grew the business.

Nat has never sought a formal diagnosis, and this conversation doesn't try to hand her one. What she does have is 25 years of learning to work with a brain that, in her words, "didn't think in a formulaic way" - and the humor, resilience, and hard-won self-trust to build VOICE, the business therapy lab she now runs for founders, brands, and teams who are ready to stop performing and reconnect with their essence.

This is a conversation about masking in rooms that reward polish over honesty, about the specific loneliness of being told your voice creates "noise," and about what happens when someone finally lets you be exactly as unboxable as you are.

In This Episode

• Losing her voice in advertising, then building a company to find it again
• The kindergarten teacher who told her mum she'd fail in structured school
• Why "bad at math" was really "taught the wrong way"
• Moving to Amsterdam at 24, learning to think in a second language, live
• The mentor who made it safe to be different
• Masking as a "performative self": 15 kilos, panic attacks
• Being told in meetings she was there "to take notes," not to have opinions
• Ania on the double empathy problem
• On never being formally diagnosed - and not sure she needs to be
• Building VOICE, and choosing who she works with now
• Her mantra in Spanish, fascia exercises in the park, lavender salt baths
• Quickfire round: time management, food quirks, fixing the world's schools

About Nat ForsterVOICE is the first business therapy lab for brands, teams, and the people who lead them. Founded by Natalia Forster - who goes by Nat, is originally from Argentina, and has called Amsterdam home for 19 years - VOICE grew out of a creative strategy career spanning 25+ years inside agencies including Ogilvy, Wieden+Kennedy, 180, and GUT Amsterdam. It exists on a single belief: most brand and culture problems are human problems, rooted in disconnection from essence.

Using a proprietary methodology called VEMM (Voice Essence Map Method), VOICE helps brands, individuals, and teams strip back the noise and find what's actually true about who they are. Nat launched VOICE in September 2025.

Website: this-is-voice.comLinkedIn: Natalia Forster

Timestamps00:00 Show intro, meet Nat Forster02:35 25 years helping brands find their voice03:21 Losing her voice, founding Voice05:41 Nano moments: when school didn't fit08:03 The kindergarten teacher who saw her12:46 Never diagnosed, still unsure13:39 Ania on the double empathy problem19:37 The mentor who let her flourish25:07 Masking, panic attacks, 15 kilos29:41 Shrinking her voice in the boardroom33:26 Voice today: who she works with35:17 Her strongest ability: humor36:33 Redefining success46:46 Fascia, mantras, and grounding58:37 The book that woke something up1:01:31 Fixing schools, if she ran the world1:02:49 Where to find Nat1:06:56 Outro and thank you

Resources Mentioned

• Untamed by Glennon Doyle - gave her permission to trust her own voice
• Atomic Habits by James Clear - taught her to protect the obvious

Work With AniaIf something in this conversation resonated, Ania's chemistry call is 30 minutes, no mask required. Book at aniahulsman.com

Enjoyed This Episode?A five-star review helps more gloriously unboxable humans find the show. If someone in your world would love this - a founder, a creative, someone quietly tired of performing - please pass it on.

Produced by Ania Hulsman. Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Dom Tyler runs Recycly, a lean team taking on much bigger, better-funded competitors in the IT asset disposal industry - and he says that's exactly what fuels him. "On paper it looks like we've got no chance," he tells Ania, but for Dom it comes down to the minds behind the decisions, not the size of the budget.

That same drive runs through the rest of his story. A few years ago, at a Halloween party, a conversation about neurodivergence turned to Dom himself. His girlfriend Kim, who works in SEN (special educational needs), was among the friends in the room when they told him, "You're extremely autistic and extremely ADHD." Dom was stunned in the moment - and spent the weeks that followed recognising just how much of his own life it explained. In this conversation, he and Ania also talk about the confrontation in his 30s that completely rewired how he saw himself and other people, the jigsaw-puzzle way his brain has to fill in every gap before it can settle, and what it costs him to drop into flow state on a hard problem (painkillers are involved).

He also talks about being misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder during one of the hardest periods of his life, and about the gloriously unboxable, neurodivergent household he shares with his partner Kim and their combined five kids. This is a conversation about coming to understand your own wiring well into adulthood - and about building a business, and a family, once you finally do.

In This Episode

• Buying an ERP business and building Recycly, up against giants
• Undiagnosed across three schools, labelled "the naughty kid"
• A confrontation in his 30s that changed how he saw people
• The jigsaw-puzzle way his brain processes information
• A Halloween party moment that sparked his recognition as autistic and ADHD
• What hyperfocus costs him, and his "energy points" theory of ADHD
• Misdiagnosed with BPD
• A neurodivergent family of seven
• Quickfire round: time, food quirks, one wish for the world

About Dom Tyler

Dom Tyler is the founder and CEO of Recycly, an ERP software platform for the IT asset disposal industry. A lifelong systems-thinker and problem-solver, Dom came to understand himself as ADHD and autistic later in life, which helped explain everything from a chaotic school experience to an intense need for clarity, fairness and making complex things simpler. He is a dad and stepdad, former English teacher, fitness enthusiast and unapologetically direct communicator. Dom now sees his neurodivergence as one of his greatest strengths, while remaining very aware of the challenges that come with it.

Website: https://recyclyerp.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/domtyler

Timestamps

00:00 Show intro, meeting Dom03:00 Recycly: complexity made simple07:00 "My superpowers, AKA neurodivergences"08:00 The confrontation that reshaped him12:00 Undiagnosed at school, where it led16:00 The jigsaw puzzle behind his questions20:00 The Halloween party realisation23:00 Age seven, a different kind of brain25:00 Masking at work, dress-code rebellion35:00 DISC, Myers-Briggs, becoming MD38:00 Reading emotions, how Kim helps41:00 The early jobs that didn't fit44:00 Weaknesses, and injustice47:00 What grounds him: gym, kids, family51:00 Misdiagnosed with BPD53:00 ADHD, bipolar, and the "energy points" theory56:00 Quickfire round59:00 Where to find Dom

Work With Ania

If this resonated, my Chemistry Call is a free 30-minute chat - no mask required.

https://calendly.com/aniahulsman/chemistry-call-30

Enjoyed this episode?

If this episode resonated, a five-star review helps other gloriously unboxable humans find the show. Thank you for being here.

Credits

Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Listener note: this episode includes open discussion of addiction and a suicide attempt. If that's tender territory for you right now, take care of yourself first.

Peter John Mather ran multiple businesses for 20 years on a brain he didn't understand. Fast, visual, endlessly lateral - the kind of mind that could legally convert four firework shops into hardware shops in 15 minutes to survive lockdown, but couldn't explain how it did any of it. For most of those years, he was quieting that mind the way many high performers do: with more intensity, more adrenaline, and eventually with drugs and alcohol.

Then he stopped. And the conversation everyone should hear is what happened next: "Since stopping taking drugs, I've become way more intelligent." He wasn't getting smarter - he was meeting neurons he'd been numbing for 18 years. Sobriety didn't just save Peter's life, though it did that too, and he speaks with rare openness about the phone call that stopped him 200 metres from a cliff edge. It introduced him to his own operating system - and understanding how his mind actually works became, in his words, the tool.

Peter is an entrepreneur, speaker, professional skydiver, and co-founder of Healthy Mindset Rebels. This is a raw, funny, tangent-rich conversation between two neurodivergent minds about capacity, reinvention, what a £5.2 million lottery win can and cannot buy, and what your wiring becomes when you finally stop dampening it.

In this episode:

• "Since stopping taking drugs, I've become way more intelligent" - and the reframe that changed everything
• Running businesses for 20 years without knowing how - why understanding your own mind is the real tool
• Visions, mental workflows, and coaching himself through decisions as "Coach Peter"
• The Loophole King: converting four firework shops into hardware shops in 15 minutes
• The phone call 200 metres from the cliff edge - and why there's never a rock bottom, only the moment you decide enough's enough
• What a £5.2 million lottery win at 21 can and cannot buy
• Knowing his capacity: recovery time, non-negotiable rituals, cutting off at 3pm without guilt
• Healthy Mindset Rebels and the mission to change 100 million lives

About Peter John Mather:

Peter John Mather is a UK-born entrepreneur, speaker, and coach now living in Arizona, USA. A professional skydiver of 19 years, he has represented Great Britain multiple times and won gold medals in the sport. After 18 years of drug and alcohol addiction and surviving two suicide attempts, Peter has been clean and sober for over five years. He has starred in a BBC documentary, built businesses across multiple industries, and worked alongside mentors including Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi. Together with his wife Ash - a breath coach - he recently launched Healthy Mindset Rebels, on a mission to help change 100 million lives.

Find Peter at healthymindsetrebels.com - or search Peter John Mather. As he'll tell you himself, there's only one.

Resources and links:

• Healthy Mindset Rebels: healthymindsetrebels.com | Instagram: instagram.com/healthymindsetrebels | Facebook: facebook.com/share/1EPNpv8X8W/
• Peter's BBC documentary: https://youtu.be/bBOikTEYeN8

Work with Ania:

If something in this conversation landed and you're curious about doing this kind of work with support, the chemistry call is 30 minutes - and there's no mask required. Book yours at aniahulsman.com.

Enjoyed this episode?

If today sparked something, please pass it on to a founder, creative, or someone quietly tired of pretending - these stories travel far when you share them. And if it feels good to leave a five-star review, it helps more gloriously unboxable humans find the show.

Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Video games from the age of four. Food. Porn from twelve. Drinking, drugs, a spiral that peaked at seventeen. Jake Kastleman describes every one of them the same way: they were escapes - ways of trying to feel okay in a life that didn't. The turning point wasn't willpower. It was a spiritual experience that opened the door to something different: building a life he no longer needed to escape from.

Today Jake is a porn recovery coach and founder of No More Desire, helping men around the world do exactly that - build a recovery mindset and lifestyle where the escape hatch loses its pull. His sister once named what he carries "power wielder" energy: fire in his hands that can warm the people around him or burn everything down. For years, it burned. Now it fuels the work.

In this conversation, Jake and Ania explore what it means to be a highly sensitive, deep-feeling, systems-thinking mind in a world that kept telling him to slow down, stay in his lane, and put on the mask - a mask he simply cannot wear. This is a story about unmasking, faith, and redirecting intensity - and about discovering that the sensitivity you were told was a curse might be the very thing that makes your work matter.

In This Episode

• The "power wielder" - deep feeling as both curse and superpower, and learning to direct the fire instead of burning things down
• Jake's turning point at seventeen: the spiritual experience that opened the door to recovery
• Fired from a fast food job after two days for being "too slow" - and the false story of being slow and dumb that he carried for years
• The sugar and brain fog discovery that transformed his thinking
• Why he could never "just put on the mask" at work, and what it cost him until he built a business where the mask isn't needed
• Wanting to move faster, seeing the inefficiencies nobody else questioned, and the workplace friction that followed
• The layoff that terrified him and turned into the biggest blessing of his life
• Hyperfocus, flow state, and the crash that follows - plus the permission to rest he's still learning to give himself
• Locking the smartphone in a drawer: the experiment that brought unexpected peace and presence
• Redefining success: presence, not time, as our most valuable resource
• Morning quiet, breathwork, and prayer as nervous system regulation

About Jake Kastleman

Jake Kastleman is a porn recovery coach and the founder of No More Desire, where he helps men across the world overcome porn addiction by building a recovery mindset and lifestyle - emotional regulation, daily routines, nervous system care, relationships, and spiritual practice. A self-described highly sensitive, deep-feeling systems thinker, Jake brings his own lived experience of addiction and recovery to his coaching and his podcast, No More Desire. He lives in Utah with his wife and children.

Website: nomoredesire.comFree tools and resources: nomoredesire.com/toolsPodcast: No More Desire (Ania's guest episode is out now)

Resources Mentioned

• Wim Hof breathing method
• Four-eight breathwork (4 seconds in through the nose, 8 out through the mouth)
• Parts work / Internal Family Systems (IFS)

Work With Ania

If something in this conversation resonated and you're curious about doing this work with support, Ania's chemistry call is 30 minutes - no mask required. Book at aniahulsman.com

Enjoying the show?

If this episode landed for you, please leave a review and share it with someone in your world - a founder, a creative, someone quietly tired of pretending. These stories travel far when you share them.

Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

What does it look like to build your entire life around a kind of intelligence the world didn't have a word for?

Charlyn Huss is a Pilates teacher of 35+ years, inventor of CoreSpring, classically trained actress, and Fulbright Scholar in Shakespeare. She discovered she had a reading disability at 25 - after teaching herself French, training at LAMDA, and building a career on a form of intelligence no test had ever measured.

She kept a series of quiet, fierce convictions to herself from childhood ("tell no one"), followed the thread her body gave her, and let everything else work itself out. The people around her consistently read deliberate, years-in-the-making decisions as impulsive.

This is a conversation about wiring differently, working with your body rather than against it, and learning - sometimes painfully - that the clearest signals come not from other people's opinions, but from inside you.

IN THIS EPISODE

The reading disability nobody caught - discovered at 25, after Charlyn had already compensated completely: reading aloud, tracking her eye with a piece of paper, colour-coding everything. She wasn't hiding it - she genuinely didn't know it had a name.

"Tell no one" - three life-shaping convictions formed between ages 9 and 12: movement, France, Shakespeare. None shared until she'd already done them. Planned, considered decisions that looked impulsive from the outside.

The stepmother who changed everything - when a temp job offer made Charlyn feel like she "weighed 10,000 pounds", her stepmother said: "Then you shouldn't do it. This is how you sift and sort what's right for you."

Reading bodies - the gift she thought everyone had - diagnosing a clicking knee from the sound of a man's walk before she'd even turned around. The story of how that moment became central to the way she now teaches.

Playhouse Pilates, Body Smarts and Performing Arts - opened in 2007 after Charlyn found herself "thoroughly unemployable" by other studios. Thirteen years, 30 teachers, a six-figure sale in negotiation - ended by a text on March 15th, 2020.

"I do it for her" - why Charlyn's definition of success has shifted entirely: not what she earns today, but what she's building for the woman she'll be when she can no longer do this work.

GUEST

Charlyn Huss Danconia, MA, NCPT, is the Founder & CEO of CoreSpring LLC and creator of the patented CoreSpring® Method. After years of unexplained pain — later diagnosed as scoliosis — and a refusal to accept discomfort as just how her body worked, she spent decades studying movement, psychology, and somatics until she invented something that didn't exist yet: a way of working directly with spring resistance, three-dimensionally through the body, to shift posture and pain patterns fast. She holds a master's degree in humanities and is a Nationally Certified Pilates Teacher.

Find her at corespring.com

🎁 Listener offer: Purchase the CoreSpring kit and use code ANIA26 for a 45-minute private Zoom with Charlyn.

WORK WITH ANIA

If something in this conversation resonated - the quiet conviction you've carried that nobody else could see yet, the way your body has always known before your mind caught up, or the cost of performing a version of yourself that doesn't quite fit - Ania works with neurodivergent founders, leaders, and creatives who are ready to stop running on the wrong operating system.

Chemistry call: 30 minutes, no mask required. aniahulsman.com

LIKED THIS EPISODE?

A five-star review helps more gloriously unboxable minds find the show. If someone in your world would love this - a founder, a creative, someone who's quietly tired of pretending - please pass it on.

Produced by Ania Hulsman. Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

He deleted his corporate career, gave himself three years of deliberate spaciousness, and came out the other side making documentaries in the Arctic and portraits of strangers in Paris.

What does freedom actually look like for a neurodivergent creative who spent six years as a production engineer at Shell - the "well doctor," flying between Norway and Australia - before walking away from all of it? Not gradually. All at once.

Baby Pro (Ming) spent the next three years in intentional flow: night cycling through Amsterdam at 4am with a drone called Miss Maverick, no plan, no goals, documenting beauty in 14 handmade journals. Now 34 and based wherever the work takes him, he earns a living entirely from his art - Arctic documentaries, TV productions in China, and a portrait project called Humans of Paris.

This conversation is for anyone who has felt the narrowing that happens inside a corporate system - the slow reduction from options A through Z down to only option A - and wondered whether there is another way to work that actually fits how their brain works. Baby Pro doesn't offer a blueprint. He offers proof that a different kind of life is possible, and that flow state isn't a productivity hack - it's what happens when a neurodivergent mind finally stops swimming against the current.

IN THIS EPISODE

The awakening on March 6th, 2021 - a Buddhist scholar on YouTube cracked open a fog Baby Pro hadn't realised he was living inside. He describes it as glasses falling off your face - and suddenly seeing clearly for the first time.

What corporate actually costs a neurodivergent mind - the progressive narrowing from options A through Z down to only option A. His word for it: becoming a robot.

How he makes decisions - not goals, not five-year plans. He plants seeds, writes them down, and trusts the process. "Look, it's manifesting here. This is in Paris now."

The early years - being short, Black, and late to puberty in a world that mocked difference. Finding solace in solitude, gaming, and writing. The roots of a life lived outside the mainstream.

The 2024 low point - money running out, depression, the tension between income and originality. How he moved through it: cold emails, a crypto week in Korea, and letting the work sell itself.

The Arctic documentary - six days, five strangers, no electricity. One person filming everything. Then watching it on a cinema screen with 150 people.

Baby Pro's three practices - wake up early, look up when you walk, and create a mirror so you can see yourself clearly enough to notice the bubble.

GUEST

Baby Pro (Ming) is an artistic storyteller and documentary filmmaker based across Europe and Asia. His work has appeared in TV documentaries, cinema screenings, and 14 handmade journals he calls his Baby Pro Playbook - a living autobiography. Find him at babypro.art

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Samsara (2011 documentary) - Ron Fricke

• Humans - documentary series, available on YouTube

• Alan Watts - philosopher and writer on Eastern philosophy

• Alan Wallace - Buddhist scholar whose YouTube video triggered Baby Pro's 2021 awakening

WORK WITH ANIA

If something in this conversation landed - the permission to do things differently, or the recognition that you might be running on the wrong operating system - Ania works with neurodivergent founders, leaders, and creatives who are ready to build theirs.

Chemistry call: 30 minutes, no mask required. aniahulsman.com

ENJOYED THE EPISODE?

A five-star review helps more gloriously unboxable humans find the show. If someone in your world would love this - a founder, a creative, someone quietly tired of pretending - pass it on.

Produced by Ania Hulsman. Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.