James and McDaniel join Mental Wealth to discuss money, entrepreneurship, family, and founding Signed, while sharing the lessons that have shaped their approach to success.
Every week, Savannah James and April McDaniel look at everything they’re building and have the same reaction: “This is crazy.”
They’ve said it so often that it has become part of the rhythm of their friendship and their businesses. It’s an unusual response from two women who have spent years turning ideas into businesses. McDaniel has built Crown and Conquer and co-founded Everybody’s Crazy, while James has expanded her work into beauty, including Reframe, and increasingly stepped into a more public role. Together, they’re bringing their ventures under one roof in their Signed holding company.
And yet, they’re still surprised by what they’re creating.
“It’s still the sweetness of it because it’s still very innocent,” McDaniel says. “People are like, ‘Are you delusional?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, we’re kind of delusional.’ But it only takes one delusional person to have generational wealth.”
That mindset runs through the latest episode of Mental Wealth, where James and McDaniel joined Boardroom CEO Rich Kleiman and Jack Howard, Head of Money Wellness at Ally Bank, for a candid conversation about entrepreneurship, friendship, money, self-worth, motherhood and the realities of building something of their own.
James and McDaniels’ partnership is rooted in a friendship that goes back 15 years. The transition from friends to business partners, McDaniel says, happened naturally.
“I feel like the shift was really organic because me and Savannah’s friendship is really about feeling and how things feel to us and does it feel good? Does it not feel good? And if it doesn’t feel good, we’re not doing it,” she said.
They’re also honest about how different their lives can be. McDaniel is more budget-conscious; James has a different level of financial flexibility. That gap has become less of a source of tension than an opportunity to understand each other: “We talk about this a lot because there’s two different lifestyles that exist,” McDaniel says. “We’re not delusional to that.”
The difference showed up in a story they’ve joked about publicly: On one flight, James was sitting in first class while McDaniel was in business. McDaniel eventually went upstairs, climbed into James’ seat, and watched a movie, but online, people were apparently offended.
For McDaniel, the larger point is that social media has distorted how people understand wealth. “I just think it’s so many misconceptions with social media around money and what things cost,” she says. “And I’m like, yeah, no, that’s not reality.”
That reality is something both women have had to navigate in different ways. McDaniel describes growing up without many resources and carrying a lingering fear that the money she has built could disappear. Even now, she jokes that she’ll email a company executive to make sure she’s getting paid.
James’ relationship with money has been shaped differently. She has never had a traditional job or regular paycheck, but she says she had to learn that value doesn’t depend on following a conventional path.
“I think for me, it’s showed up in the fact that I have never held a regular job,” James says. “I’ve never gotten a regular paycheck, but there is still a sense of value that I hold and that I bring to the table that should be recognized.”
That lesson has become part of how they think about entrepreneurship and how they encourage other women to think about their own worth. McDaniel says she regularly rehearses with young women who are nervous about asking for what they believe they deserve: “So many young people are scared to even ask for what they think they deserve, especially women.”
Their businesses have also forced them to become more comfortable with uncertainty. They funded Everybody’s Crazy themselves for its first two years, but McDaniel says they’ve reached a point where continuing to grow means stepping outside their comfort zone and raising money.
At the same time, they’re learning when to walk away. Shared values matter; so does energy. When either starts to feel wrong, they’re increasingly willing to let go. The same philosophy extends beyond business and into their families. Both women want their children to understand money without making it the center of their lives. They talk about earning, saving, spending, and recognizing how unusual their access can be.
For James, that perspective has remained remarkably consistent even as her circumstances have changed: “The tax bracket has changed, and the things, the prices on things have changed, but the way that I value those things has not.”
That may be the clearest explanation for what James and McDaniel are building together. They aren’t chasing a definition of success that looks impressive from the outside. They’re trying to create businesses, relationships, and lives that feel right from the inside.
“We didn’t love this question because it doesn’t look like anything,” McDaniel says of defining success. “It’s the way it feels.”
For them, that means seeking ease, support, and love, and continuing to grow without losing the curiosity that got them here. Because every week, they’re still looking around at it all and saying the same thing.
“This is crazy.”
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