Nonfiction · Mental Health & Entrepreneurship
The storytellers
Entrepreneur Aftershock is built on real experience. These are the founders and contributors who shared their stories so other entrepreneurs would not feel so alone in theirs.
Cait Donovan
Cait Donovan has spent years telling people the truth about burnout. It's not a personal failure, it's a mismatch problem. She's the host of FRIED, a top 1% podcast with over a million downloads, author of The Bouncebackability Factor, and Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations. She's the person organizations call when they're finally ready to fix the real problem.
Dr. Mandy Marziaz
Dr. Mandy Marziaz is a chiropractor and functional medicine doctor who specializes in nervous-system regulation and health coaching for entrepreneurs. After experiencing long COVID and perimenopause, she shifted from intensity-focused optimization to building sustainable businesses. Her core belief: stability might be more valuable than intensity.
Kristin Darga
Kristin Darga is an executive coach and leadership advisor with two decades of experience working with founders, CEOs, and executive teams. Through Black Label Coaching she has coached 500+ leaders, and she founded Leadership Deprogrammed to help leaders get honest about how they're leading and what results they're actually creating.
Heather Lutze
Heather Lutze is a fearless bipolar survivor and founder of The Crazy Good Life Project, a nonprofit dedicated to helping all people live mentally healthy lives. Through keynotes, workshops, and TEDx Talks, she builds a movement around self-acceptance, breaking stigma, and building the resilience that makes life genuinely good.
Mary Grothe
Mary Grothe is Chief Revenue Officer at Piedmont Global and founder of Sunday Salmon, a nonprofit providing no-cost organic meals in Castle Rock, Colorado. A keynote speaker and bestselling author, she scaled companies from startup to $20M+ before selling House of Revenue in 2023 and turning her expertise toward community impact.
Mike Michalowicz
Mike Michalowicz helps entrepreneurs build lasting wealth and freedom through simple, proven systems. After building and selling two multi-million-dollar companies by 35, he lost everything as an angel investor, and turned that breakdown into his breakthrough. He created Profit First, the cash-flow system used by over a million business owners.
Bonnie Schutz
Bonnie Schutz is CEO of Tandem Resource Solutions, a remote support and admin recruiting firm, and host of the Delegate2Elevate podcast. She helps brilliant entrepreneurs hand off the work they've carried too long, so they can focus on their highest-impact work and build businesses that are actually sustainable.
Nick Freud
Nick Freud is co-founder and COO of Fellow Humans, a platform that helps people going through life's big transitions learn from those who have already been there. Before that, he co-founded CampusReel, an EdTech platform used by more than a million students and 160+ schools, and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30. After his own experience with clinical depression, Nick dedicated his work to one idea: people heal faster when they're connected to fellow humans who get it.
Mark S. McNally
Mark S. McNally is the founder and Chief Nobody of Nobody Studios, an AI venture studio on a mission to launch 100 AI-driven companies in five years. A self-described radical thinker, Mark built Nobody Studios around community-powered venture creation, bringing together builders, investors, and creators to start companies designed for speed, profitability, and meaningful impact.
Thank you to every founder who trusted us with the hard chapter.
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Entrepreneur Aftershock launches Tuesday, November 10, 2026. Get launch news, early excerpts, and first access to the free founder toolkit.