Welcome to The Black Sheep Playground

Ever wonder where all the passionate weirdoes are hanging out, sharing cute dog memes and questioning productivity norms created by toxic capitalism? They’re in the Black Sheep Playground. 

Because whether you want to start a revolution or build a life full of joy, your energy and time are precious. To make the most of your days, you need to…

…do way more of the things that make your brain happy.

…do way less mundane bullshit. 

…understand how your unique brain works, so you can work with it, rather than against it. 

You learn how to do all of this in the Playground, while being supported by the most brilliant, delightful humans on the planet. There’s no other space like it, especially for ADHD and neurodivergent brains. 

If you're ADHD or some other form of neurodivergent, you likely always felt different. Even if you couldn't pinpoint it, you sensed that somehow, in some way, you experienced the world differently compared to many of your peers (side note: if you relate to this, you might be neurodivergent, even if you don't have a formal diagnosis). 

This wouldn't be an issue, except that most of us learn at a young age that different is bad. This leads to a conundrum for anyone who is different:

• Do you reject and mute your uniqueness in service of "fitting in" and doing things the way other people do OR
• Do you accept the things that make you unique and risk taking on the world alone?

This is why being different is playing life on hard mode. You are constantly making a trade-off between doing things like everyone else or being yourself. If you’re constantly fighting yourself, you’re wasting time and energy that could be devoted to kicking butts and making the world more awesome. It’s exhausting.

It isn’t your fault. The modern world wasn’t built for neurodivergent weirdos. Your nervous system craves novelty and challenge and experimentation, which are often absent in schools or typical white-collar jobs. 

You need to be following a different set of rules and creating your own manual, instead of trying to copy everyone else's. 

Enter the Black Sheep Playground...

Since 2020, I’ve coached a wide variety of humans for thousands of hours, and there is one crucial difference that separates the neurodivergent humans who find fulfillment and joy...and those who don't. 

It’s whether they’re willing to love their weird, brilliant brain and embrace its unique, creative gifts. 

This perspective opens you to believing that there is no “right” way to do anything. You start exploring solutions based on what feels good to you.  

Here’s what some of what is possible (because people in the Playground have done it) when you aren’t white-knuckling each day according to someone else's model of the "right" way to live your life: 

• Grow a multiple six-figure business, while taking spontaneous Disneyland trips and remodeling your barn and doing anything and everything that expresses your full, multifaceted humanity. 

• Fall in love with creating art again, with zero internalized pressure and guilt about doing it “consistently”. 

• Stop spending all your energy outside work catching up on chores, and create space to have completely open, completely unstructured time to do whatever the fuck your heart desires in the moment.

• Build the strong, badass body you’ve always dreamed of not through discipline (because fuck discipline), but by finding the unique combination of activities that get you moving willingly.  

Experience has shown me time and again that these results aren’t reserved for the rare few. They are the natural byproduct of a understanding your unique nervous system and loving the shit out of it. 

They are the result of embracing your Black Sheep brain.

• Regular conversations and coaching with Megan Kierstead, which you can attend live or watch in replay (plus the occasional surprise pop-up session or workshop). Our group is small enough that everyone who shows up to our calls gets 1:1 attention from me. Our current calls meet on...

  • The first three Wednesdays of the month at 2pm PT.

  • The first and third Thursday each month at 9am PT. (We have a live calendar for all of this, so you don't have to keep track!)

• A ever-growing self-serve, searchable library of science-backed lessons, coaching calls, and activities designed to keep even the most distractible brain having fun and building an experimental mindset. Transcripts and captions included.

• Our all-in-one portal here on Mighty Networks means you only have to go to one place to keep track of all the goodness. You can access the app on your phone or tablet or through the web. 

• Belong to a community where you can be an "us" for once, instead of a "them" (thanks Jonathan Larson).

• Pay once, and get access to everything in the Playground, plus whatever I continue to add as we grow and change. 

Hi, I’m Meg! - Experience Researcher & Product Strategist (aka human behavior expert) turned Life Coach. In my decade in the tech industry, I have helped some of the biggest brands and most brilliant minds wrap their arms around overwhelming, completely bonkers problems in industries like healthcare, finance, education (no one could ever accuse me of taking the easy path). It’s also pretty neat that I occasionally play Grand Vizier to executives who are doing things like hitting 8-figures for the first time and scaling past 10M daily users. This is Big Stuff. 

Even with all this success, I experienced overwhelming self-doubt and shame, especially when it came to having severe ADHD, chronic illness, and PTSD. 

Like many intelligent women, I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until adulthood. As a researcher, I made it my mission to understand why I would do the things I do and why so many things felt so damn difficult. 

I worked with psychiatrists at the Hallowell Center (a top ADHD center) and UCSF (one of the best psychiatry programs in the county) to go deep on my habits, productivity, and growth. I read research papers and books and underwent a battery of cognitive testing. 

It wasn’t, however, until I started working with a coach (who also had ADHD) that things began to finally click. I could use every productivity hack and reminder app in the world, but if I felt ashamed of my differences, I would never feel successful. 

Helping other brilliant weirdoes on this journey is what drives me nowadays. We work together in the Playground to discover your gifts, embrace your neurodivergent differences, and unlearning the expectations and prescriptions of a society that wasn’t built to help you succeed.

If you are interested in my bonafides, I am a certified Life Coach through the Life Coach School and hold an M.S. in the Human Dimensions of Environmental Conservation from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst and a B.A. in Computer Science & Political Science from Wellesley College...but honestly, these are some of the least interesting things about me.