ADHD Entrepreneurs: Beautiful Chaos Brains

Caitlin Kindred 0:23

Okay , my fellow business-running chaos goblins gather round , because today's episode is for anyone with ADHD who's ever looked at a 9 to 5 and said hard pass . We're talking ADHD and entrepreneurship . Now , full disclosure . We recorded this as one mega episode but , truth be told , it ran so long that even our ADHD brains got distracted while we were listening to it , so we're splitting it into two . So this week we're focusing on the superpowers , the weird and wonderful ways that ADHD brains thrive when they're running their own show . Next week we'll get into the challenges , because there are some slash many , but today we're celebrating why your chaotic , beautiful brain might actually be your secret business weapon . Let's get to it . Hi , friends , we're so glad you're here .

Caitlin Kindred 1:22

Welcome to how to Be a Grownup . This is the how-to show with advice . We learn the hard way . There's really no other way to explain this . I'm Caitlin . I like how I said a before that , like I didn't know who I am With me today . Co-hosting for Jenny is Ariella Monti , who is the amazing author of Roots and Ink , and she is the love child of a TED talk and a disco ball .

Ariella Monti 1:48

I have no idea what that means , but I love it I think it works .

Caitlin Kindred 1:52

Uh , I don't know . Yeah , I don't know what it means either although any with any leslie nope style compliment .

Ariella Monti 2:00

It never makes sense right now like they're always accurate , but yeah , but don't make sense , which is hilarious .

Caitlin Kindred 2:09

Yeah , it's like you know you yak with the mind of a puma . I don't know , it's just weird stuff and I love it . Anyway , today we are talking about ADHD and entrepreneurs and why we are so kick-butt at being entrepreneurs and how to find systems that work for you , because it's really difficult to be an entrepreneur and accountable to only yourself as someone with ADHD .

Ariella Monti 2:37

Yes , so tough . It's so , so tough when you don't have your own boss to tell you what to do . Right and you don't have hard deadlines with deliverables like yeah , yeah , it's rough , yeah , okay , right so I have in the script here some kind of witty intro that I can't think of right now and that has not changed , so we're just gonna go right into it and I like it say so I'm going to say that this information has come from a couple of different uh sources , most of them being um attitude magazine , which it's like a dd it's yeah , it's , yeah , so it's a

Ariella Monti 3:22

really great source . Yeah , it's a great resource for people with ADHD , as well as just being ADHD myself , and I said to somebody yesterday that I think I've been a freelancer or working for myself in one way or another more than I have in my adult life Like I'm not counting like pre , like college , high school and everything but in my post-college life I think I have worked for myself longer than I have worked for someone else as like an employee . I didn't know that .

Ariella Monti 4:01

Okay , yeah , I just kind of thought about it yesterday I was like , oh wow , look at that yeah .

Caitlin Kindred 4:07

That's kind of awesome . Good for you . Sure , I mean , yeah , all right , cool , maybe not . Whatever Doesn't have to be good , no problem .

Ariella Monti 4:18

No , I mean , that's a topic for another show , like the pros and cons of being your own small business , of being your own small business . So , for the sake of this conversation , we're going to lump entrepreneurship with just business ownership , freelancing or any situation in which someone is working for themselves , because , whether it's true or not , the term entrepreneurship tends to imply somebody who runs a startup Like when you think of an entrepreneur , like I usually think of some douchey tech bro who is like Not all .

Caitlin Kindred 4:54

I work for startups .

Ariella Monti 4:55

Not all of them are like that , but I do know what you're talking about .

Caitlin Kindred 4:57

No , it's not Right .

Ariella Monti 4:59

There is like the word implies a stereotype that you know which is true or not .

Caitlin Kindred 5:02

So we're gonna talk about all of that together ?

Ariella Monti 5:03

Yeah , yeah , not . So we're going to talk about .

Caitlin Kindred 5:07

All of that together , yeah .

Ariella Monti 5:09

Yeah , yeah , yeah . Small businesses that are owned by people with ADHD . Yes , right , okay gotcha , regardless of their potential tech douchebaggery and also regardless of their size , because you could have , it could be a larger business , small business you could be for me . I do not have employees . I can barely pay myself a salary , so I have no employees .

Caitlin Kindred 5:41

I'm looking for sponsors for this show actively , so I'm hoping to . If you want to help , do that . We're all ears , because right now I'm an entrepreneur who loses money on this every week , so I feel you .

Ariella Monti 5:56

I feel you Okay . So there's been a few studies on ADHD and entrepreneurs and actually one from Syracuse University found that leadership who have ADHD outperformed their peers . And this tends to be because people with ADHD have a specific collection of traits that are strengths when you own or are leading a business . When you own or are leading a business . Now I'm going to say I am not a medical professional . In any case , I have a master's degree in publishing . So I'm coming at this with looking for the information , passing it off to y'all and take what you need , you know , leave what you don't .

Ariella Monti 6:48

And some of these strengths that we're going to talk about , there's going to be

Strengths: Risk-Taking and Problem Solving

Ariella Monti 6:52

some that you're going to be like really , but that's also a weakness . We're going to get to the weakness part , but let's first talk about the strengths . So the first one is risk-taking , which I know . When we think about risk-taking we think about the kids who run out into traffic . But when it comes to being a business owner or business leader , this impulsivity can help us make business decisions that someone else might find too risky because they're , like , too pragmatic and they kind of think about it a little bit too much .

Ariella Monti 7:31

and when we make these riskier decisions with some intentionality behind them , then that risk could pay off yeah because we get a certain amount of dopamine from just like doing something a little bit crazy for sure but again , this is something that that could work against us if it's not intentional problem solving . We love a puzzle , a physical puzzle , like you know , with pieces and stuff .

Caitlin Kindred 8:05

Yeah , we know we've had these conversations about puzzles before like legitimate puzzling , Right yeah ?

Ariella Monti 8:11

But we , as ADHD people , we are drawn to fixing things , not just fixing like physical things , but like we see a problem , we want to fix it . If we see a gap , we want to fill it . You know we see a problematic man and we're like I can fix him , but it's my romance author coming out . But ADHD people are good about thinking kind of outside the box , are good about thinking kind of outside the box and the actual process of working out a problem is really exciting for us and we get excited about figuring out ways to solve a problem .

Caitlin Kindred 8:53

There's also a little bit of this jack of all trades , master of none sort of vibe with ADHD people , where they tend to be able to not only think about the solution but actually actively solve the problem , because they go hyper fixate on how to solve it and then learn enough to do it . So like this is why I broke code on a website the other day , because I was like , oh , I know how to fix this , I know what to do here . I'm the only one who knows how to go into the design manager and fix it all , and then I broke it .

Caitlin Kindred 9:24

But I still maintain that I have done other things in that design manager before and made it possible . So I mean there is a little bit of that actual skill that goes into it too , because we do learn enough about how to solve the problem in addition to being able to think about what needs to happen next .

Ariella Monti 9:41

Exactly , and that is a good segue to the passion part of it , which is the hyper focus part of it . So when we find something that triggers that excitement , we're going to go full force into it . So if we see a problem and we want to fix it , but we don't have the skills to fix it or the knowledge to fix it , like we're , going to dive into it .

Caitlin Kindred 10:08

Oh yeah , cue the hyper fixation right now .

Ariella Monti 10:11

Right right , right , exactly . And when we do things that

Passion, Purpose and Making a Difference

Ariella Monti 10:16

we're interested in , it's going to . It's one of those things like not that . I believe this . You know , if you do what you love like , you'll never work a day in your life which is like it's garbage . But on some level for an ADHD person it's true . You know we are not going to go into business doing something that we don't enjoy , you know .

Caitlin Kindred 10:45

Yes , that's true .

Ariella Monti 10:47

We're not going to open up a business that we are not passionate about Now . Granted , that passion is not everything that you need for owning a business , but it is something that I think is a strength for us . That hyper focus , that drive to do the things that we're interested in , I think sustain us when things get a little bit rough . I would agree with that . Yeah , sort of going back to it's related to the problem solving and the passion , but we have a drive to make a difference . So if we see how things can be improved , we want to like get in there and improve it . So it brings us a lot of excitement to make a difference in one way or another . You know , maybe it's a business . You know , maybe it's a business , maybe it's a nonprofit , but that we get a lot of excitement and we get a lot of dopamine out of helping and making making a difference .

Caitlin Kindred 11:52

There is a little bit of um I don't even want to say a little bit there . One of the hallmark characteristics of ADHD that I'm learning about is this sense of fairness and justice that needs to . That is very real for us . Like when things aren't fair externally , we take that very personally , and I think that that kind of goes back to this urge to help people . So , absolutely , you know , I see a lot of that in myself too . I like well , this isn't fair , what can I do to fix it ? How can I help ? And I think that that's where a lot of these ideas come from is people with this sense of justice that we have being inspired by ? Whatever we feel around us is not okay .

Ariella Monti 12:38

Yeah , absolutely , totally , totally . I absolutely agree with that . Another strength is enjoying variety . So being a business owner means that you're doing all the things and that variety can help keep some ADHDers from getting bored Though I'm going to push back on that a little bit , because we also need to do things that are boring as a business owner , and those boring things can be incredibly draining and leave us with little for the things that we do enjoy . So I think , when it comes to enjoying variety and the idea of multitasking and having your hand in several pots , I think when it comes to enjoying variety and the idea of like multitasking and having your hand in several pots , I think that's going to be specific to like an individual person , because I know , when it comes to book publishing , I don't want to do sales and distribution , and if I had the money to outsource that .

Caitlin Kindred 13:42

I absolutely would . Right , that's what I was going to say

Thriving in Variety and Chaos

Caitlin Kindred 13:44

. Yeah , that's what I was going to say is like this is when you see entrepreneurs start hiring people to do the things they don't want to do . Absolutely yeah .

Ariella Monti 13:53

And also we find a certain level of comfort in chaos . You know we do thrive with a routine , but we also do seem to come alive in a crisis or even just when things are kind of going wrong , sort of all at the same time . And you know your first years of owning a business can be flexible is really valuable when you're trying to get your business sort of off the ground .

Caitlin Kindred 14:28

Yeah , you just reminded me of what we talked about last week , which was the whole great in a crisis overwhelmed by the details of the everyday right , yeah , which is why we need someone to come in and do the distribution and sales and billing and crap like that that we don't want to do but can handle the startup life that is chaotic .

Ariella Monti 14:51

Right , yeah , yeah , definitely . So those are our strengths and it would be very easy to just like focus on those things , but I think it's important that we validate the challenges that we have , because ADHD is considered a disability for a reason , and especially in the workplace , there's a lot about our ADHD that can be disabling and that doesn't go away when we own our own business . We can manage them more appropriately when we have our own business , but they don't disappear . So we have to acknowledge the weaknesses and make accommodations for them .

Caitlin Kindred 15:35

So there you have it ADHD entrepreneurs , the hyper-focus-fueled , idea-generating wait . How is this a strength , risk-taking magic of running a business your way ? But and you knew there was a but right ? Next week we're pulling back the curtain on the other side of entrepreneurship with ADHD Think time , blindness meets deadlines , rejection , sensitivity versus making sales calls . And why

Coming Next: The Entrepreneurial Challenges

Caitlin Kindred 16:02

just hire ? Help is so much easier said than done when your brain overthinks everything . There's a lot of information . That's going to be a ride , so hit , follow to make sure you don't miss it . And if you've ever you know cried into a spreadsheet , trust me you will feel seen with this episode . This has been how to Be a Grown-Up . Go forth and exploit your ADHD strengths . This week We'll handle the chaos together next time . Okay , grown-ups , imagine this A museum basement , a forbidden diary and magic that could get you killed .

Caitlin Kindred 16:40

My brilliant bestie and guest co-host , ariella Monti's novel Roots and Ink is a captivating mix of historical fantasy and slow burn romance . Think like Outlander meets the Atlas Six , but with the banter that you've come to love from Ariella . When archivist Emma DeMarco uncovers a scribe's diaries exposing Bellhaven's erased magical history , she teams up with Liam , a museum caretaker , hiding his own dangerous gifts . But when his magic turns lethal . Emma has to choose risk everything to save him or let history repeat itself . This is perfect for fans

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Caitlin Kindred 17:14

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