Mastering Career and Finances with ADHD: Insights and Strategies from Shell Mendelson

That's just what's been going on Working on too many projects , trying to do too much stuff but the bottom line is a lot of my busyness has been in preparation for something that I'm very excited about , and I have very little hints to give you , like none , except for that you're going to want to stay tuned because I will be unleashing the best thing that's

ever happened for ADHDers who want to get their money together , be in control of their money and be guided by somebody who consistently delivers an approach that is sensitive just sensitive , because I am sensitive , but also an approach that is sensitive and aware and totally focused on the shortcomings that we adhders have when it comes to managing our money , which

everybody's different . Everybody's got different shortcomings . Everybody with ADHD has various strengths and weaknesses that apply to money . You know some are very good at getting on a . You know some know have the knowledge for money .

So it's just about getting the motivation , the correct motivation , and some people don't have enough knowledge that it's overwhelming and intimidating . And then we all typically struggle with the constant stimulation chase , whether that's spending too much money on stuff that's stimulating or whether that's not staying consistently stimulated by managing money effectively .

So until you can figure out why it's worth it intrinsically , at the deepest , rudest , corest level , it's going to be tough , but what I'm going to unleash on the world is going to have a lot of that and more , and I can't wait . It's going to be so exciting .

I thought it was going to be here already , because I have magical thinking and I'm like , oh , this project two months ? Nah , it's been like seven months now , but it's coming . It's coming . I'm just learning to take my time , but it's coming .

So , with all that said , if you still have this podcast checked off as a following and you get a notification or whatever when a new one comes out . Thank you , because maybe you saw this . I'm going to talk to somebody today . This is going to be a conversation with Shell Mendelson , who is an ADHD career coach and she's great . You should use her .

I mean , if you look in the mirror and you say this is what I'm doing with my life right now I go to this job nine to five and if you can look at yourself in the mirror and say this is what I'm doing with my life right now I go to this job nine to five and if you can look at yourself in the mirror and say I am fulfilled in this , this is what

I want , then you don't need her . But if you want a career that aligns with your values , that aligns with your financial goals , and you want help figuring out that whole , all the stuff there's a lot more than you think that goes beneath the surface of figuring this stuff out . She's an expert at it . I talked to her today .

She's so fun to talk to , like she's just so chill and we recorded this like maybe two months ago and she's just been like bugging me , like get it out , get it out .

I'm just like , I'm in paralysis of like I can't do anything besides , just do what my brain is yelling at me to do , which is get caught up on the millions of things that I'm not caught up on . And she just kept nagging and nagging . And you know what ?

It's like the kind of nagging that's like the best kind of nag , because it's like you're so right , I need to do this . Like what am I doing ? It's like it's like the shame you want . She's going to listen to this and be like , what the heck are you talking about ? So , anyways , I'm pretty sure this conversation starts off like mid-sentence or something .

So I know you're gonna get a lot out of it . You're gonna get a lot more out of this conversation than you have over the past five minutes of me just talking about basically , basically nothing . So let's do the talk . Let's talk to shell . Hi , shell . So like why did you write this book ?

But what I found was , even before I was diagnosed , later in life , I was starting to tweak it quite a bit .

The order of how things were presented I had to change to fit what I thought was easier for people to understand and made more sense in general , and I had to add additional graphics because I am a visual learner and many of the people I work with are visual learners .

So I started doing lots of graphics and using metaphors to illustrate ideas that I was trying to get across to people to make it easier , simpler to digest . And always my goal was how do you get people who can't articulate and don't know what they want in their work to finally be able to gain that clarity and focus and speak of it and articulate it ?

That's a tall order and I think a lot of people , many people , most people , have not had any kind of schooling or coursework or direction regarding how to do that step by step . Lots of career books out there , lots of stuff . Parachute was the first one that I found that actually did the work , you know , help people sort of break things down .

But what I found and I still love Parachute and I always say get that book as a resource . It's a big book and it's a great resource to have and everyone should have a copy of it . And I'd say , get the 2017 edition .

I did it several times so that I could really get a good sense , because I was already a career counselor and I just wanted to have the method that I could use with other people , and so from that I started working in in-person groups .

I mean , I've been doing this for 30 , close to 35 years now and it's changed , it's shifted and changed along with my own need for changing things up , being flexible , growing in my field , having fun with what I'm doing . You know you've got ADHD . You know we can't be bored . We got to love what we do . Got to love it .

Yeah , if we didn't love it , how good do you think we'd really be at what we do if we didn't love it ?

And then many people get slotted into these performance improvement programs PIPs , which I'm sure you're familiar with that are the kiss of death , literally , for people with ADHD in terms of keeping their jobs or actually improving things , because they don't really improve . They just are one step to , you know , being let loose .

And in the meantime the people involved in those programs incur such trauma . I mean , I've talked to so many traumatized people that have gone through that kind of a process because they don't even deal with the work that they're doing or try to improve it . They just make it harder for them and they become more watched .

So once you get into one of those , I always say it's time to start exiting or finding an exit as quickly , as soon as you can .

And this process that I do is the step that pretty much everyone needs , whether it's with me or a book I don't know if you can do a book great to figure this stuff out , so that you don't make the same mistakes over and over and over again , which is what happens when people don't have any kind of structure for doing this work .

People don't have any kind of structure for doing this work . So I offer the masterclass . That's what I got started three and a half years ago now and they've been going full on ever since I started .

And from doing that masterclass I finally wrote the book , because I was writing it the whole time that I was presenting it to people , shifting and changing and adding things to it , and I got tired of having to tweak everything and I said I just have to do it myself . I just got to do it myself and I just buckled down and did it .

And it was a labor of love , for sure , because I know there's nothing else out there like this . You've seen it right . Have you seen anything like it ?

That skill is that you have has to be used for you to feel fulfilled . Is that true or not true ?

Next , it sets the groundwork for what we do every day , and when you really understand who you are and you own all the elements that are super important to you your must haves and you take a look at them and you drown out the voices telling you this isn't going to work , that's not going to work . Have you tried this ? Have you tried that ?

And you know what I'm talking about . That's called the safekeeping self , the term I use , and it was coined by Richard Bowles many , many years ago , and I just always expand on that , the safekeeping self .

Even the smallest things like acknowledging that you enjoy art , if you're a business person or if you're an accountant , and you enjoy some aspects of the visual arts and actually they're kind of important for you to have in the work that you do on some level . But it doesn't mean you have to be a visual artist .

But just acknowledging that , without and wholeheartedly saying yes , it's important to me , without fear of it taking your money down a few notches , just being bold enough to say this is important to me , these are my must-haves , because without being able to do that , without doing that , in a sense you're saying I'm not important , what I want isn't important .

And with ADHD , if we don't acknowledge all of that at some point , we will never get to the place that we really are going to be , is going to be sustainable over the long haul . You know , in terms of the work we do , you know the shiny object things that people go for like , oh , I've got a great .

Either I've got a great idea or I saw this job that looks like it might be cool . Or I saw this program that looks like it might be cool . I think I'll invest a few thousand bucks in this thing . That looks really I call it shiny object classes . You know , I think I'll try this .

I think think I'll try that you know what I'm talking about any of the people that of your audience know what I'm talking about and I certainly was there .

When you do it , you drop it and you don't finish it , and then you feel bad about that and you look back but there's something that you that drew you there that is of importance yeah , like I think something like internal within you that's just having a hard time articulating itself , that's sort of like expressing itself through this , like never-ending search for

something more or new , more and new totally when you ask about the book . The book sort of helps on many levels . It also provides that kind of emotional support to help you notice when that safekeeping self is entering the room . I call it .

So that's why there's never any real commitment or follow through or execution on it . It's because it's something that you have been told over and over again . This is what you need to do , this is what you should do .

You should have an emergency fund that's this big , you should have this and that , but really it's not what you actually want , and so you have to really disregard what society says sometimes and figure out what is it that you really want , even if it's not the thing that your parents would want you to do or that society would approve of .

You have to connect to what it is that you really want , which I think is what you're basically saying in your domain .

I think the money part plays into this whole process and it comes in the form of what are your actual expenses ? What is the baseline of what you need to make and earn before you can even look at anything else ?

And how are you going to make sure that that's being covered , even if it means maybe taking what I call a means to an end job in addition to getting some training or something like that ? But if you don't have those numbers in front of you , you can't be very realistic about it , right ?

That's just one of the factors that we look at , and it doesn't mean that they can't change or they can't be . Somebody really called me on that one the other day . I'm trying to think the situation . They were saying yeah , when you know that you also need to know to be able to move things around or to take things out .

It gives you a chance to see what you're actually spending money on . So you can actually decide oh , I don't think that's important to spend money on anymore . Maybe I can get things down to , if I have to take like an intern job that doesn't pay me quite as much , that if I take this out I can move it around and make it work .

So it gives you more incentive to actually make it work . And , by the way , you're listed as a resource in the book . You know that .

You can either spend less and save more , or you can spend the same and make more and save more . And then the third is you can you can have your investments do better .

But the first two are the ones that are like I get in these conversations where it's almost like the advice that they don't want to hear is that I think you should consider finding a way to make more money yeah because it's like , well , how , and I only have so many ideas on that .

but if you're , if your vision for your life is so and so , but your current career and income trajectory doesn't support that , then to me that just seems like a prudent thing to start exploring , because you're so limited by your income , on what you can do to get more financially healthy . So which kind of sucks .

In general , I mean , it's a kind of a sucky thing to have to always be dealing with .

You never know .

And then first , for one reason or another , there's often still something , some resistance , that they didn't really think over the feedback I get from people who've gone through the expenses part .

So once you're kind of looking at it , it's equal parts scary , but then it quickly the actual satisfaction of looking at it takes over , because you're like at least I know what I'm dealing with now , as opposed to just pretending it doesn't exist .

If I just don't do this thing that I've always wanted to do , or maybe go on a vacation or do something if I just don't do this , whatever , I know we can get into that .

You've probably had these conversations a lot , but as far as making a career shift , it can really help if you need to get some more training , for example , in something very specific and one of the things the book and working with me in the class , because that's a deeper dive , by the way . So I do .

I still do the masterclass for people and the book is part of the masterclass . So they go through the book while we're we're getting . They're getting coached as they go along the way with accountability , and accountability is a big part of it , right ?

So the other people in in the cohort in the class help each other out in terms of networking and staying on track and doing the exercises body doubling and all of that While in the class they're getting coached . But the book will take you through a lot of that , and it is possible to do the book with other people , not by yourself .

With ADHD , it's very tough to do it on your own . You need to have some accountability . Oh yes , absolutely and . I have a whole section called accountability and you are your accountability . I can't remember the title exactly , but it's . It talks about different ways that you can stay on track . That that are fun Makes sense , you know .

Like , what are some of the common complaints that come in like frustrations , and let's go down that line of thinking ? I know I just kind of said it in a few different ways , but I think you get where I'm going with it .

So , on the lighter side , they want more options , they have some idea and , even lighter than that , they actually like their jobs . But now they want to see well , maybe there's a lateral move or there's more opportunities to do more of what I like or to do different aspects of what I like . So that's on the lighter side .

On the more intense side , it's like they don't have a clue . They really are frustrated and they just want the direction . They want a way to figure it out . How do I figure out my must-haves ? What do I actually need ? Who am I ? Who the heck am I ? And also what's my purpose .

People don't directly ask for that in this , but that's part of what it culminates and ends up offering as well is a way to really understand what your purpose is , your overall . That goes beyond work . It's just like when you have that , it makes it .

It is kind of like that fire that is lit underneath all of us to keep us going , knowing that , oh , I'm here for a reason . I got to do this thing . If I don't do it , who's going to do it ? Somebody's got to do it . Might as well be me . That's kind of how I am . That's how I started . I ended up doing pretty much everything I've done .

it really solidifies so much for people it really does and I wish everyone really got that yeah it's hard to find , though , especially if you're coming from a place of like real kind of like purposelessness .

It could be hard and it would take a lot of work , but I , I truly believe that , um , with the right support and and with the work that you have to put into figuring it out , it can be done .

When I reread it back to myself now which I think is people can still get like on my website I'm like , well , this isn't really adhd friendly because it required me to work with a lot of people and to actually see this all happening in real life , like if I were to rewrite a book now , it would be so different than the first thing I wrote .

Yeah , more pictures , pictures , visuals , short chunks of words , not long paragraphs , exactly bullets , graphics , interactiveness , make it kind of like a treasure hunt . Make it make gamify it , give it some fun challenge , but also never let there be a friction bottleneck .

I've gotten a really good response so far . Yeah , that meant a lot to me to have somebody say that it was the most ADHD friendly book he had ever seen . That's great .

That are the majority of your work .

I don't want to stop doing it , but now it's time for me to go home and be with my kids , or it's time for me to get out of my off my home office and show my face , because you have other aspects of your life that are working hopefully too or not working , so you get help , yeah .

But I'd say there's so many aspects of the corporate world that challenge people these days and you know I do want to say firsthand that not every corporate situation is negative for people .

There are some companies that are getting it and making strides in that area and the ones that are at least trying , you know they're the winners , they're the ones that are going to get these productive adhd people when they figure that out .

But part of figuring it out means you have to listen and you have to be willing to make to do some accommodation work with them . But the accommodation , so that's not answering the corporate question . That's a big question because it really depends on the corporation , the ones that I see people working with now .

Very often the term soul crushing kind of goes along with it , and for many reasons I mean because people try and fit themselves in with neurotypical people and try and keep up and it generally it might take longer to do a task , so they're just not getting as much done , they're not as productive or they're being watched all the time , they're being called on the

carpet . You can't say you know , it's really not okay . I don't think I don't recommend telling people you have ADHD , telling your boss . You don't recommend that . I do not .

What I recommend is something in the book and in the class we cover very extensively , and that is creating a self-accommodation plan where it's so extensive that you know how your environment needs to be to function productively and in a fulfilling kind of way .

I mean you know , sitting where you're sitting , doing what you're doing , what your environment needs to be right and that's why you're successful doing what you're doing and why I'm successful doing what I'm doing , because I have that rigged for myself .

But if you don't have a way to do that and number one , it starts with understanding what you need and then being uncompromising about only being in work situations that will allow certain you to have your way accommodation wise . And that doesn't always mean demanding the employer do it .

It means asking the right questions and letting them know that if you , when you're able to work in this way , when you have your environment kind of set up a certain way , you can be the most productive person for them and make them a ton of money . If that's the way you want to put it , they will have like a top-notch employee .

It could be expressed as a win-win and a way to collaborate more with the employer than to say I need all this stuff , I have to have all this stuff . I demand you do this for me , because nobody responds well to that . It has to be a win-win and it has to be with your knowledge of what you need .

And if you don't create a plan and really understand what it is , how can you articulate it ?

Sometimes you just have a sense that you need something , but you don't know what it is and you feel kind of funny about it and you feel kind of , you know , get that like kind of underlying hum of like , oh , something's not right .

You can never do anything about it , especially if you're in a corporate setting where you feel , when you said , feeling watched like that . That just gives me the heebie-jeebies idea , does it ?

Then I would go to lunch and I would study for a while definitely longer than you know , I guess what would be deemed an acceptable lunch break and after a while , you know my my supervisor was like got to stop doing that . I mean , I'm getting all my job done . My job here is very repeatable and it's the same thing every day and I'm getting it all done .

You're not giving me anything else to do , like that's a big deal . I'm stretching it all done . You're not giving me anything else to do Like what's the big deal ? I'm stretching my brain here .

Some people can , but I think the ones that try and fit themselves in you know the square peg in a round hole kind of thing eventually break down and need to get out or find or end up with in burnout or end up in the HR office . Hrs are there are people that work for the company .

They don't really work for the employees , so that's not always the same .

So what's the big deal if I'm getting all my job done ? That should be part of your job is to do that studying yeah I'm like , was the only one around , I would go to eat lunch and pull out the textbook and I would start reading it .

You know , I'm reading a textbook on finance alone during lunch , instead of going back and pretending to work and chatting with people .

like yeah , then you , oh gosh , the overlords or what , have caught on to me and they can't say it to my face , even though I can see all of my managers from where I'm sitting . They had to go to do chain of command , just like no , that's the term chain of command gives me the heebie-jeebies .

That would be another non-physical . But to say all the things you hate on the left-hand side , like you draw a line down the middle on the left , you put all the things you hate and then we convert , you go back to the top and then you take the very first one you wrote . And what is the other side of that for you ?

So if micromanaging is number one , the other side of that might be more flexibility . You know environment , that's more flexible , where I am trusted to get the work done within a certain timeframe , where somebody is not breathing down my neck all the time and with expectations that are not realistic , necessarily , all of those things that you can .

For each person it's different , right ? So I say there's no opposite , necessarily . There's just the other side for you . That's a very freeing exercise to do . It's just to just regurgitate all of it and say what you don't like . That's one of the steps to getting real and honest with yourself , you know , and not being afraid to just come out with it .

And in the the class , when I have people do that and they read their list , it's sometimes it's just like people are you should see the head bobbing . That goes on yeah , I bet not just the head bobbing , but people going oh my gosh , you're so right I forgot about that one .

Because a lot of us adhders , we thrive on the reminders of , of feeling appreciated by our employer and by because , for me , as soon as you put me into a negative , you start triggering all the inadequacy of like oh gosh , I'm going to fail , like that shuts you down .

I mean that you can't even do good work if you're in a heightened anxiety state because of that kind of thing . So exactly .

I just it took me not very long Well , it took me maybe five years of working for someone else , doing something , doing the work I really liked , but it was the working for someone else part right To realize that I had to be on my own and I didn't ever want to work for anyone again and I never looked back .

I was just taking the work that I already did and you know I got my own office and my own stationery and did it my way . I wasn't answering to anyone .

I just didn't love it .

Doing this work has allowed me to do so many cool things with what I'm doing that that's what I want for other people to feel that freedom , in whatever form it comes . I don't know , I think working for someone getting back to owing investors , I really think people need to think twice about that with ADHD , I really do .

Unless you have your , have carved out your position to be exactly the way it works for you , environmentally and accommodation wise , so you , you could at least have the freedom to do that . Yeah , I hear you ?

What I always tell people is look , you probably will work for somebody first , especially if you're starting something new , and I always say don't do it until you know exactly what you want and you've gone through this process first , so that you can identify what you want , and then working for someone else is more about laying the foundation for how to do it ,

so you can take it on the road and do it yourself . Yeah , absolutely , isn't that true ? I did that for five years before I took off and did my own thing . I worked for two employers and I got to do whatever I wanted because I was top of the line at the company , because I was doing what I loved .

But then the company became the second company was mom and pop that went corporate and I said , no , that's it , I'm out of here .

own and learning , soaking all of the experience in a way that's applying it to what you're going to be doing .

I can really feel good about it , but you are , you're doing something that you actually enjoy for someone else first , but you're learning the ropes and I always , like I said , kind of getting back to what I tell people is that you may work for somebody for a while for that purpose , right , or even just in general , because a lot of people with ADHD I mean

I've seen people work for 20 years for the same employer with ADHD somehow they did it , but then work for 20 years for the same employer with ADHD somehow they did it , but then at some point it's going to fall apart because the ADHD part of your brain is going to catch up and then something will happen where things will go awry , it will crash at some

point , and then it's time to really look at what is it that I really want and go from there .

Why isn't everyone doing this process , doing something like this before they make these critical decisions Like even going to college , even getting into taking a training program , doing anything literally ? Why would they not do something like this first ? And I never really said it out loud because I thought , oh , that's too much selling .

You know you're selling and I hated the idea of selling . But I know , looking back after all these years , that without going through something like this and unless you're really happy with what you're doing which is very cool and 100% support continuing along that path but at some point at least with ADHD , you must do this .

You must do something , and that's why I wrote the book . It's at least for people who can't invest in the class and I can't , obviously , it's just me and one other person teaching the class now .

But the book is a good way to get started and there are ways to do that with other people and I wanted to get into the hands of teachers , so that you know that's why I say it's for teens so that high school teachers can start giving their students this information , taking them through a process .

So before they decide on a college , before they decide on a degree , certainly in the first two years of college is another time to do it . Certainly in the first two years of college is another time to do it .

If you haven't decided on a major , or if you are unemployed and you can't figure out what , how to take the skills , or even figure out the skills that you have that you want to use , and maybe what industries you could use them in where it would make sense , and you could then articulate all that to an employer .

This process will help you get at least and the book is a good start , as long as you do the whole damn thing and you have somebody else to work with to do it . So yes , it should be in every unemployment office . It should be in every high school , every career center and colleges .

They can help people , you know , start to break that down with their clients , and so it should be in the hands of all of those professionals , and that was my goal . It was , you know , I'm getting up there in age . No , oh yeah , I don't sound like it , because I have ADHD and we kind of run young , don't we ?

Yeah , before you go off to college because if I'm paying for your college to some extent , I'm not , I don't want to , I'm not paying for four years of floating around drinking all the time I want you to have an idea and like get a little bit pumped up about . Like , like , having an idea of what you want to do . That really makes a difference .

Yeah , you can't avoid figuring it out by doing a book like this . If you do this book and you're not faking it , you're gonna learn to learn some stuff .

So even if you forget it and you go off track , you can kind of re go back and be like , oh wait , I did this book and it looks like from this , these notes .

I think it's got some reviews in there on Amazon at launch in January it's it's got five reviews and Amazon holds onto those . I don't know why . Boy , so many people have reviewed who said that it hasn't shown up yet . So I know there's more reviews kind of waiting , but those five are pretty cool . So you can get it there too .

And the book is called yeah , nobody knows the name of the book that helps Shell . That helps . It's called A Course for Adults and Teens Unlock your Career Path . Unlock your Career Path . Even if you put Unlock your Career Path , it'll probably come up . Or you put my name , shel Mendelson , m-e-n-d-e-l-s-o-n . Plenty of ways to get it .

And once you get a copy of it , when you start using it and you start seeing kind of the ease of use or any of that a review would be fantastic .

That just means that it makes it clearer for everyone else when it's written the right way .