When Magic Happens: A Reflection on the NFP Planner Journey

Something is ending here—but in true Grace style, I love to reflect on where we’ve been. I believe that reflection helps shape where we are going.

The story of the planner

In July 2015 I flew to the US to see my friend Alison. I bought her a journal with a line on the cover, hoping it would support her through some things she was working through. I came home and thought nothing more of it. Little did I know what would unfold next.

On 10 September 2015, Alison returned to Australia for an unexpected quick trip. Over coffee she said, “That journal changed something in me. I want to help people make things like that.”

I laughed and said, “Funny you should say that… I’ve written a program and wanted a planner to go with it, but the company I reached out to never replied. Want to make one together?”

Seven weeks later—on 30 November 2015—she sent the files to print.

Between those dates lived friendship, chaos, frustration, tears, joy, perseverance, inspiration, more tears… and then the thing we now call the NFP Planner.

What I mean by “magic”

People talk about magic like it’s luck or lightning. I think of it differently.

To me, magic is when all the unfinished, half-baked, or seemingly wasted moments of wisdom, knowledge, grit, and flow suddenly gather and take form. It looks like fairy dust, but it’s really years of burnouts, restarts, experiments, and tiny wins finally finding a place to land.

For me, the magic had three parts:

• Preparation – years of trying (and failing) to manage myself in life and work.

• Partnership – Alison said “Let’s do it” and brought the design courage and determination I didn’t yet have.

• Service – the planner had a job: to help multifaceted humans—charity workers, small business owners, mums, teams—feel less overwhelmed and more intentional.

Emergence in action

In science and philosophy, there’s a concept called emergence. It’s when two (or more) things come together, and what results is more than the sum of its parts. A new quality, property, or phenomenon appears that wasn’t there in either thing alone.

That’s what happened between Alison and me.

We’d bounce ideas back and forth: I’d sketch layouts and scribble page designs, send them across; she’d mock them up in InDesign. She was in the US, I was in Australia. She’d send files late at night, I’d wake up and make changes.

There were so many points where one of us would sigh, “Is this too hard?” and the other would find the energy to push us both through.

In the middle of this Alison and her husband Aaron (Mercer Wines) were preparing to move their family back to Australia by Christmas. Two weeks before print, the graphic designer pulled out. Alison still shakes her head that the planner exists at all—she thought it was meant to be “designed better.” She even had to write the consignment notes in Chinese. She was such an amazing ally through this.

What unfolded

Yet, despite the chaos, something was born. Over the next decade more than 5,000 A4 and 2,500 A5 planners found their way onto desks, dining tables, and team meeting rooms.

Looking back, the story isn’t about perfection. It’s about flow, emergence, and the way magic looks so ordinary while it’s happening.

Bad days. Misprints. Packing up lives and relocating. Small babies. New businesses. Print suppliers. Deadlines looming. You cry, then you send the file anyway.

The fairy dust was never in perfection. It was in the courage to create something real, keep listening, and let the planner become what people needed it to be.

The reflection

When I sit with this journey now, it feels less like a product story and more like a life story. A reminder that:

✨ Magic rarely arrives with trumpets. It often sneaks in through the side door labelled start.
✨ Partnerships matter. The right person at the right moment can shift everything.
✨ Creation isn’t tidy. It’s friendship, chaos, tears, joy, and persistence all woven together.

For me, the planner was never really about the pages. It was about what happens when ideas, timing, and people meet in service of something bigger than themselves.

And that, I think, is where the real magic lives.