The Sustainable Solopreneur is a weekly newsletter about seasonal, cyclical, supportive business strategy for solopreneurs and creative souls who want more out of life than the status quo, hosted by business coach and strategist Jenni Gritters. Today, you’re reading the Sample Paths column, which takes you behind the scenes of someone else’s life and business.
When I first discovered Dani Fankhauser's work, I was immediately drawn to her unique approach to coaching writers. As someone who has experienced firsthand how creative blocks often stem from deeper emotional patterns, I knew her perspective on intuition would resonate with our community.
Today, she shares her journey from startup co-founder to intuitive writing coach. She explains why she deleted her LinkedIn account (and never looked back), and also talks about how she helps writers understand that creative flow is really just nervous system regulation in disguise.
Enjoy!
Dani, how would you describe your work right now?
I help people write books. That's the simple answer. But once we get started digging into the blocks people have within their writing routines, and even talking about craft questions, we end up talking about childhood trauma. I've been doing this work on myself long enough to not be surprised by this.
When I was struggling to write my first novel, I turned to meditation to help me, and eventually did an in-depth training in meditation and energy healing. Now I coach and teach classes that combine the practical side of writing with the healing practices that open up the creative channel.
I believe that when we have a book idea and feel that urge to get it down and share it widely, it's really our subconscious (or soul) that is wanting to bring something to the conscious mind to be healed. Through the process of writing, we process and clear these old emotional hurdles. Then, what's really cool is that the book itself becomes a healing transmission when people read it. If you think about the books that changed your life, that gave you a new perspective on the world or helped you see yourself in a new way—it's because the author was willing to go through an alchemical process themselves, during the writing.
Tell us about your unique path to entrepreneurship. How did you arrive here? What drew you to the non-traditional working world?
As a child, I was a big daydreamer. Even when I had my first business internship in college, I remember thinking that it felt wrong to be in an office during the best part of the day. And I always wanted to write books.
But I also wanted to prove to my parents that I could pay off my student loans, so after getting a master's in journalism, I worked for media companies as an editor, and then technology startups doing content and marketing. Eventually, I was the cofounder of a few early-stage startups. I would say I was drawn to the building stage of creating something from nothing, and the inherent risk.
It was still an awkward jump to making myself the product, as a teacher and coach. I left my startup role to write my first novel, and then I was desperate to build income in a way that allowed me the time and presence I needed to keep working on fiction. I'd also trained in astrology, so I offered readings and team-building workshops for awhile (and wrote one of my favorite articles ever—about Taylor Swift's progressed moon for Refinery29!). I struggled to bring together the various trainings and skills I'd accumulated into a clear offer until a business coach pointed out that my clients were mostly writers and I'm a writer, so why not focus on helping writers?
It’s great to hear about your transition. I think a lot of my readers will resonate with having different skills and passions, but not knowing how to thread them together. Can you tell us more about how your writing and spiritual perspectives come together in a coaching setting?
Yes! Fun story: When I sat down to write my first novel, while I was on what I called a "sabbatical" from working for startups, I estimated that I could write 5,000 words per day and be done in three weeks. I was assuming I could sit at my desk for the usual number of hours I had in the last decade of day jobs. It turns out that creative writing is a different animal completely. The more I tried to write, the worse my writing was, or I couldn't write anything at all.
What I learned over the next few years, in studying spiritual practices, especially energy healing and manifestation, is that what we call creative flow is just nervous system regulation and intuition. It's not active; it's receptive.
The discipline we need to write well is to persistently get ourselves into a bliss state. Good writing feels more like listening than doing.
From a more technical side, the writing comes from the subconscious. When we meditate, or are otherwise relaxed, our brain wave state lowers from beta to alpha and maybe down to the sleep states. It's connecting the wires between the conscious and subconscious minds. That is like plugging the intuition in. There's a lot of leeway into how it's done, and that's why so many writers have quirky opening writing rituals.
Whew! I’m writing that down: Good writing is about reception, not doing. Speaking of quirkiness: What is an unconventional decision you've made regarding to how you set up your work? How did it map out?
A muscle I've been building over many years now is to trust my intuition, no matter how batshit it sounds. A few years ago, I deleted my LinkedIn account. This made no logical sense.
At this point, I'd left my job and written a novel, but I wasn't getting offers from literary agents, and I still didn't have a strong idea of what my business would be. And even so—most people would argue I could use LinkedIn to promote my writing and any business endeavor, since I had a great network there built over a 10+ year career.
The way my intuition came through was that I'd sort of fantasized about deleting the account a few times, and gotten excited when I saw another writer say she'd deleted hers, and then one day I was journaling after a leisurely morning at the beach and had this incredible urge to do it immediately and never look back.
Years later, I understand why. Every time I worried my fiction was a waste of time or that my business was doomed, I would have been tempted to go back onto LinkedIn, in a panic, and apply for jobs (that I didn't actually want). I needed to cut off that avenue to protect my psyche.
It's not something I'd recommend for anyone else, but that's how intuition is—it gives you, the individual, the exact path you need.
How do you believe about human, authentic writing during this era of increased AI?
What worries me about AI is the way I hear writers say they use it for creative problem-solving during those moments when your mind is drawing a blank and you want to generate ideas. Naturally, you feel like you're saving time by asking AI.
The problem is that the brain operates on neural pathways. If you don't use it, you lose it.
But if we stop using our brain's ability to generate a solution and, more crucially, to have agency in making the best choice—we become slave to the AI who "knows better." We lose our ability to have original thought.
I also believe AI will become an essential part of our world. It comes down to discernment in how to use it in a way that doesn't siphon off our own intelligence. And that ability to discern is exactly what we're at the risk of losing—and is another reason why I'm so adamant about teaching intuition.
What advice would you give to someone who's struggling with not feeling connected to the "standard" paths of work and wants to make a change?
My best advice is to figure out what your soul wants. We all have a part that wants approval and safety, and then our soul, which wants growth. For a lot of us who start business or write books, it's because our soul wants expansion.
This is something I learned from writing my first novel. When I got an editor's feedback, I found out the reason the book wasn't compelling was because I was subtly guiding my protagonist away from conflict, as if to protect her. We want the opposite in a book. We want stakes. That's fun for the reader. We want to turn the character down the dark alley, and so on.
I was doing the same thing in my life. If I hit any road block, I thought I wasn't on the right track. For the soul, it's the opposite. The soul wants bigger stakes. That's fun for the soul.
That's why you're thinking about going off-script. When you see the challenges as carrots that mark your highest path, you have a completely different (and more pleasurable) experience of life!
Dani Fankhauser is an intuitive healer and writing coach. She teaches spiritual practices to help writers trust their inner voice so their words can reach the masses. Her fiction has been published by Sheepshead Review, NonBinary Review, HAD, and Nightshade Publishing.
To hear more from Dani, check out her website at https://www.danifankhauser.com or follow her on Instagram.
Curious about my (Jenni’s) background? I’m a writer and business coach living in Central Oregon. My goal is to teach everyone who will listen that it’s possible to build a simple, stable, successful business that supports your human needs first. Join my group coaching program, SUSTAIN, for more conversations like this (and a community of people who are all about the path less taken), and follow me on LinkedIn & Instagram.