From Disney Dreams to ND Hive: A Founder Story

Who ND OutLoud is and what this session gives you

Danielle: Hello there. I’m Danielle Ralston. I am the founder and head coach here at ND OutLoud. What is ND OutLoud? ND OutLoud is a team of neurodivergent coaches. We are neurodivergent, every single one of us. TBI, PTSD, ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, all of the things. We also have a passion for supporting others like us, so you don’t have to struggle like we did in our past. We have all taken trainings and certifications so that we can support you in living a better life and upgrading all of the things that are frustrating about your life.

What is this session going to give you? Actionable tips. Yes, we’re going to talk about our programs and the things that we offer, but I want you to walk away with something actionable for something that is overwhelming, frustrating, or just plain annoying you right now in your life. Or, if you’re a parent or a spouse of someone with neurodivergence, something to help them as well. I want you to walk away with something today. So please sign up for a free call so we can learn more about each other.

A brother and sister reunited by a business idea

Danielle: Hello, hello, hello everyone. This is Danielle and Tim with ND Hive, ND OutLoud, ND Visionary Partners, all the ND things. We haven’t done a full introduction in a little while, so we’re going to do that. Who am I? I’m Danielle Ralston. I’m the CEO and founder of all things ND World here. And this is Tim Blonsky. Tim is my director of business development and sales, and also my baby brother.

Tim: Yeah. That’s kind of an interesting part of the journey that we’re on, something that I truly enjoy. It all started with just a very quick phone call, now almost two years ago, which is kind of crazy when you think about it, because it feels like it was just a few months ago. It was just a quick idea, and that idea actually came to fruition really within the last six weeks, which is super exciting. We’ll talk about that in a second. But Danielle and I collectively have a very traumatic and interesting childhood, and as a result a lot of our family just kind of went our separate ways as we became adults. We kept in touch here and there, birthdays and things like that, but not really truly being siblings or family in the fullest sense until not that long ago. So this started as a business centric relationship, but now I have a sister again and she has a brother, which is really, really cool.

Danielle: Even though we’ve worked together for almost two years now, in May, that was the first time you and I had been in the same space for more than an hour, a birthday party or a Christmas dinner, in 30 plus years.

Tim: Yeah. And we went to Disney World for our Disney retreat and we roomed together as brother and sister, which was a lot of fun. It really was. I knew it was going to be fine, but it was truly almost an out of body experience. It was almost spiritual in a way. And we made a difference that week. We have a team that is incredible, one we didn’t expect to have.

Danielle: We had all of these amazing people come on the Disney trip, some that were already on my team, and some I was thinking would be a good addition but didn’t quite know how to fit in. And Disney was life changing for our business. For us personally, it was an amazing trip, and we get to do it again in May. I can’t wait.

What treatment centers taught us about day-to-day support

Danielle: We’ve gotten to do some really cool things in 2025, and heading into 2026, the conversations that I’ve gotten to have with my team for the last two weeks are just amazing. So I’m going to start. We went to Healing Appalachia last month, which raised money to fight drug addiction in the Appalachia area. Chris Stapleton played. A couple days of great music, and dust, so much dust. We thought we would be talking directly to our clients, and we talked to a few, but we ended up connecting with so many treatment centers for addiction recovery, talking to them about what was missing for people coming out of the first phase of addiction treatment. And that was day-to-day life support. And I’m like, we have that. We meet for 10 hours a day. We already have clients who are battling addiction, and this is something that we’ve offered since day one. I think one of my first clients was someone who is neurodivergent and battles addiction issues, so that’s something we’re well versed in here. I never thought to offer it to treatment facilities. So we’re going to be talking to so many of them.

Tim: What we saw firsthand at Disney and beyond is that we’re creating community for individuals that are neurodivergent, which is the whole spectrum, ADHD all the way to autism and everything in between. There literally is no community in the space for those individuals. And when you’re in community, you understand yourself better as a result of relating with other people that deal with similar issues on a day-to-day basis. And then in work life, relationships, parenting, everything. And we realized, after other conversations, that we need to not just be offering this to the neurodivergent community. The neurodivergent community absolutely needs it, and that’s where my heart is as a neurodivergent person myself. But we’re looking at offering this as a health and wellness community for 10 hours a day, because everybody needs support. Everybody needs community. Everybody needs connection, and especially in the US, it’s not something we have.

Growing up in a deaf and hard of hearing program

Tim: Stemming back from that infamous phone call in August of 2024, if I’m not mistaken, where I said, “Hey Danielle, what about deaf and hard of hearing people?” Let’s backtrack a little. Danielle and I both grew up around the deaf and hard of hearing community in a very rural small town in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. And I am deaf. I’m hard of hearing. I was born deaf. We also have a sister that has basically the same hearing level that I do. We both grew up in an ASL and English household, and we had an incredible teacher for the deaf who was part of our family and will be part of our family forever. As a result, Danielle had that perspective of understanding Deaf culture and all the nuances of that culture. And it actually benefited her too, with the challenges she was dealing with from, again, a very traumatic childhood. Speak to that for a second, Danielle, and then I’m going to circle back to the deaf part of it.

Danielle: Growing up in that rural community, and when I say rural, I mean not well trained in neurodivergence, especially neurodivergence in women and girls, I was misdiagnosed as a child instead of being recognized as ADHD and autistic. I am AuDHD, the combination of ADHD and autism, and I have multiple learning disabilities on top of it. They did not know what to do with me, and I didn’t learn. Nobody bothered to teach me. I sat in the back of the classroom, bored, and didn’t learn anything. I didn’t have school books. I didn’t have homework.

The deaf and hard of hearing teacher, as I was sitting in the back of her room one day after school, wanted to know where my homework was. And my friend, who was also hard of hearing and the same age as me, said, “She doesn’t even have books. They don’t give her books.” Mrs. D is an amazing woman. She’s barely 5 feet tall, always had mega heels on, and I could hear them clicking down the hall. I think she ran down the hallway to go yell at somebody. By Monday morning, I was in the deaf and hard of hearing program full time. This was in April, because it was Becky’s birthday. And by the end of the school year, I was working above grade level in almost every subject except math, because I will never be good at math. I was in fifth grade and barely reading. This teacher took me from not doing well to doing very, very well by the end of the school year, just because I needed somebody to understand and see how my brain worked. That was it.

Tim: Absolutely. So as a result, this is close to both of our hearts. Danielle is someone that benefited from, basically, a deaf education, having that person centered support on a day-to-day basis in this hard of hearing program. And then someone like myself, who is deaf. I’m the president of the Idaho Association for the Deaf. I am the co-CEO of an AI company that focuses on sign language recognition. I’m very involved in the Deaf community, and honestly, I’d rather be in a conversation in full ASL, because that’s my preferred language. But I benefited from the fact that this program had very intensive speech therapy, so I’ve had the best of both worlds.

So I asked Danielle, “Hey, what about deaf and hard of hearing people that are also ADHD or autistic, and have struggled in life?” Because they’re told, “Oh, well, you’re deaf, so that’s why you can’t get that job you want, or that’s why you struggle with relationships and everything in between.” And the light bulb went off in both of our heads at the same time. We have been trying to build a community for anyone, but then also, specifically, a community for deaf and hard of hearing people. And we’ve already gotten a couple of clients there and are really taking off on that.

Adapting everything for invisible disabilities

Danielle: We have one client right now who I enjoy working with so much. He is such a joy, and I’m able to work with him one-on-one, and we have gotten through the communication barriers. As you see, I am not signing. Do I know sign? Yes, I can read sign just fine, but due to my MS, I am unable to sign for long, and even when I do sign, I don’t think my signs are very good anymore, because I just can’t make my hands do that. And yes, I grew up signing.

But working through communication barriers, we noticed where our gaps were for all of our clients. We need closed captioning on for all of our meetings, because we have people with auditory processing disorders. I am somebody who can’t watch TV without captioning. I can’t hear unless I have closed captioning on, and I do not have a hearing loss. It’s definitely an ADHD and autism thing. Then we realized that we needed better transcription than what we had built in, because some of our clients were still missing some things. So we have adapted everything that we’re doing to serve anybody with an invisible disability. Right now I am talking to a young woman who may be coming in who cannot read at all, due to some learning disabilities and vision issues. So we’re looking at AI translators to take everything that is written and run it through screen readers, adapting things like that.

I love that we’re able to look at what our community doesn’t have, the whole invisible disability community as a whole, and say, “What’s missing? How can we create the community that we need?” And these are lessons we learned in elementary school. Because what Mrs. D did was give deaf and hard of hearing kids in an extremely rural area, I think we were 10 or 12 school districts worth of deaf and hard of hearing kids in one school, community. We would have picnics, we would get together, we would go to Darien Lake, the theme park. We did so much as a community, and I think that’s something I had been missing ever since.

Tim: You know, that’s interesting. That is what we’re doing. We’re recreating our childhood.

Danielle: We are. So Mrs. D, if you see this, this is all your fault.

Being honest about the failures: jobs, burnout, and diagnosis

Danielle: I want to talk about some of the successes you and I have had as neurodivergent adults, and I want to be honest and talk about some of the failures we’ve had because of it too, being neurodivergent with other disabilities on top. I have 12 autoimmune disorders, so I have major chronic illness issues, and learning disabilities, and I’m ADHD and autistic. And then I have childhood trauma, which always adds to all of that. I want to be really open about that.

So where were the failures? I went through so many different jobs. I could not figure out who I wanted to be or what I wanted to be as an adult, at all. I have worked as a paralegal. I have worked in shipping, in sales, in IT. I did the best in IT out of anything. I’ve worked as a coach, in operations, in project management, as a marketing person, and I did very well at that too. I have done so many different things, and I would burn out on all of them.

Tim: It’s interesting, because I was just looking at this about a week ago. I was looking at my LinkedIn, making sure my profile is up to date and ready to go with everything we’re about to do, and I noticed, and I never realized until I actually visually saw it, that my resume basically looks like: I worked three years in this job and then I didn’t like it anymore and moved to this job. I worked at this job for two years and didn’t like it anymore. I worked at this job for a year. And I thought, that’s interesting. Because back then I didn’t understand myself like I understand myself now, and I always felt that I was a failure because I couldn’t stick to a particular job the way I was supposed to. There’s a lot of cultural pressure put on all of us to conform into a certain mode, and ADHD people are not that. They’re people that can mesh with wherever they’re at, especially in a place where they understand themselves better.

And I have to go back to my divorce three years ago, where I was in a family that was extremely wealthy, that had very particular expectations that I was not able to match. So therefore I was just a complete failure in everything. It wasn’t until going through all the trauma of that fun situation that I realized, maybe I do have ADHD. There’s a whole other discussion we can have about that. But once I better understood myself, I got on a journey that has led to this, where I’m on the cusp of success in several different areas, because I understand myself better. So yeah, a lot of failures. But because I’m part of a community, I am in a place of success that I’ve always dreamed about, and it’s actually now happening.

Deep Sign AI: building ASL access that has never existed

Danielle: And what are some of the cool things you’re doing now? You mentioned the ASL app, so talk a bit more about that.

Tim: Yeah. I’m the co-CEO of a company called Deep Sign AI. It’s a sign language recognition company. You’re able to basically sign into a camera and have it convert to English. We’re international. We have an engineering team in Eastern Europe, and we’ve developed four different models in house. We’re at a place now where our model is such that we are partnering with other companies. We have meetings in the next couple of weeks with some major partners and potential investors and venture capitalists. Everything is coming together for this to be something that’s going to change the world for the Deaf community.

Because with this tech, a Deaf person can come up to an airport kiosk and sign, “Hey, where is gate 847?” in their preferred language, and have it come back in ASL the other way as well. Or ordering a hamburger at a fast food counter in ASL. Or calling a cable company or a phone manufacturer in ASL because they have a tech issue. The Deaf community in general prefers to communicate in their own language, just like you and I do in English. ASL is their primary language, and it’s what they understand best. So we’re creating access that Deaf people have only dreamed of. We’re creating something that’s basically the ChatGPT of ASL. There’s already a language model in English, pretty much the whole English language has been consumed by AI, so you can ask AI anything and get an answer immediately. We want to be able to do that in ASL as well. We’ve been developing that, collecting data around the United States and online, and we’re just about to come out with something that’s going to blow people’s minds.

So I’m working on that, I’m working with you, Danielle, and there are a few other things I’m doing on the side as well. Because as an individual with ADHD, I love the fact that I can focus on all these different things rather than just one thing. That’s better understanding myself. Now I’m in this place where I really thrive, doing this and doing that, and I do it all really well, because it’s the way my brain works. I’m meshing how my brain works with my professional development and who I am as a person.

Building a business that fits an ADHD brain

Danielle: Honestly, I love how our brains work. So I do a bunch of different things. Mostly it’s running all of the ND world, but within that I get to do different things. Two weeks ago I went and did a corporate training on how to decrease overwhelm in the workplace. I’ve spoken at conferences on dopamine, decreasing overwhelm, and executive function. I get to talk about so many subjects under the neurodiverse umbrella, and I get to do corporate trainings for companies on that. I still work as a business coach, with a handful of business coaching clients, and I get to help them be super successful and bring in massive amounts of money for themselves, which I love. Then I get to do group coaching under ND Hive. Each of my team members also has their own business, so I get to work as a coach and a mentor with them. We’ve got somebody with a sticker business, somebody else who’s a coach. I’m also a mentor to coaches who are in training. And because I didn’t like how ADHD coaching was taught out there, I decided to start my own ADHD coaching certification business, and I get to do that every week.

And I love being able to do all of those things while growing this business with one of the most amazing teams in the world. We’ve got Dr. Jessica, Tara, Shay, Rebecca, Tim, Rain, Katie, and Jamie. All of these people are people that I keep adopting. I go to a conference and I meet someone. I met Jessica at a conference three or four years ago. Last year I met Jamie at a conference. I met Tara at a conference four or five years ago. I just keep adopting people. I get to do that every day, and I get to be super social, and I get to do it successfully. And I’m not just playing. I pay my bills, this is how I make money, and my whole team makes money working with me. We’re actually growing a business, and we’re growing something for our community that’s affordable. That is a huge, huge deal for me.

My business coach a few weeks ago yelled at me because our monthly price was so low for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week of support. He said, “That’s not sustainable.” And I said, “Yes, I’ve proven it is. Don’t tell me it’s not sustainable.” We are raising prices slightly in January, but only slightly.

Tim: What it comes down to is, of course, as a team we want to make money. Who doesn’t? But I mean this with every ounce of my being: we truly have an authentic approach, and we really want to change the world. We’re creating a world that’s easy and accessible for individuals that are deaf or hard of hearing, and individuals on the spectrum, who are often on a lower socioeconomic background but are in a place where they can be incredibly successful if they have a community and people they relate to on a daily basis. That then increases their livelihood and how they earn money. So we’re truly creating a community that’s going to grow over time. We just want to change the world. Maybe make a little money on top of that. We’re not looking to become millionaires or billionaires.

Danielle: I want to pay my bills. I want to make sure I pay my cell phone bill every month without worrying about it. I joke that my goal is that my phone bill can be on autopay and I never even have to think about it. That is my goal in life. And I want others to feel that same freedom. I’ve done that rat race before. I never want to do it again. I want to offer affordable, accessible care. And if we’re not accessible to you right now, tell me why, and I’ll figure it out.

What a real day of body doubling looks like

Danielle: So if you want to join us, come join us. Come get 10 hours a day of support. I left body doubling, our mentorship coaching Zoom channel, a little bit ago, and there were six people on. That brings me joy every day, to see so many people on. Yesterday I was all by myself all day, I don’t know what was up with that, but the rest of the time we usually have five or six people at a time. We had 22 people one day. And they’re working to find success in their days, whether that’s cleaning your house, or working out, or remembering to eat lunch, or whatever it is. Come in, and we can help you with every single thing in your life. And if we aren’t adapted in a way that you need, please tell me and I will fix it.

Tim: That’s a big part of what we do. It’s adaptable to pretty much any facet of life.

Danielle: Every facet. Examples of discussions today, and then we’re going to wrap up. We had somebody having trouble having enough coffee this morning, so we talked about coffee, and she perked up a little bit. We had somebody come in who was just frustrated. She’s a therapist dealing with insurance agencies. We had somebody else who came in to make herself breakfast. We had somebody else who had nobody in her house for the first time in a year and just came in to enjoy the silence and our chatty body doubling, and that was fine. We had somebody else that came in to get her laundry done. And we had somebody else who needed to get a ton of paperwork done at his day job, so he came in, because he hates doing that particular paperwork, to set intentions and have accountability to get it done. Every walk of life, getting things done and finding success. That’s all it is. Come in and find success in your day.

If you want to join us, if you need anything, just let us know. We’d be happy to jump in, figure out how to make it adaptable and accessible to you, and find out how we can make life more enjoyable and successful for you every day. Have a good day, everyone.