#29 — Building Brain 1st Businesses: Amanda Perry

Before we get started, if you'd like to join more than 4,000 people learning how to manage ADHD with skills not pills, why not sign up for my... free weekly newsletter. Just go to drugfreeadhd.org and sign up right there on the homepage. On today's episode, I speak with ADHD entrepreneur Amanda Perry. She is helping you to build a brain-first business. But we start this episode off with a very unusual message I received via social media from a 50-year-old bloke.

asking me whether I'd like to collaborate with him on a product for perimenopausal women with ADHD. It's safe to say that Amanda was furious when I told her this. And at the end of the day, what the fuck do I know about that subject? Okay, let's get into it. Two weeks ago, I received a DM on LinkedIn and it was someone I'd never heard of before, a bloke. And he said to me, basically, we are...

And he didn't say who we are at the time, but we are bringing a product to life, ADHD, and we'd love to get you involved. And I said, right, interesting. Can you just tell me more about what it is, please? So then he messages again and he says, we're creating an app, which is for perimenopausal women with ADHD. and then the next line stop stop stop we're looking for funding and we're eyeing an exit so this app didn't even exist it doesn't exist right no existence

But already planning to make, to mint it, basically. Right. And this was a bloke. And he was, and he was 50. He was probably 50 looking at his photograph. And he was like, why? And I just totally agree. 50, why? Not replied to things. No. I almost screenshotted it and used it as a post. I'm not going to do that. So anyway, more people will hear this than would have seen that post. So let's talk about it now. What do you think?

My perimenopausal rage is raging. I think it's... I mean, we're used to men kind of trying to lead the discussion on... everything aren't we like in life trying to own the discussion and particularly over women's rights and women's bodies and all this kind of thing and holding that power but there's something there's a special place for people who or men who want to profit from for me personally it's my experience day to day on social is the feeling of men selling me my ADHD struggles, problems.

and perimenopause problems it's like having that sold back to you and it's it's my what my issue has always been with like that pain point marketing and i think it's the neurodivergence in me that's like I know what you're trying to do you know and the thing is it's annoying because I'm almost falling for it. you know i'm going like yeah that is how i feel that is a problem but you only know that because of extensive google research and not like experience your own experience i think it's i mean

It's capitalism, isn't it? It's the problem with the whole rise of TikTok, ADHD, neurodivergent influences. And all the problems that we're seeing there where people are talking about, people are only talking about the things that perform well or that get them a good, get them good engagement. And the lines of how true that is or how helpful that is get blurred because they want the growth and they want that. And whether that's just to grow and account for.

brand deals or for ego or visibility or whether it's for a commercial game the same problems exist don't they and I'm speaking as someone who grows a platform because

I want more visibility so that I can help more people through my membership or coaching or whatever it might be. And I find myself having to tread a very fine line of... well I don't actually that's not true I was gonna say am I am I I have to be very careful what I'm led by you know if I'm just being led by oh this performs well so I'm gonna post this again and again and again and again

That to me isn't like creatively fulfilling. I have to talk about stuff from lived experience because I'm not a doctor or psychologist or anything like that. But I have to talk about stuff that means something to me and I know means something to my audience. And for me, it's that that's how you connect and engage and build these relationships that do go on to potentially be.

a commercial relationship but I think you have to be very careful what you're led by and what you're you know it all comes down to motive doesn't it what what are your motives like why what are your objectives for posting that if it's literally in that message yeah oh yeah 100 yeah absolutely at least he's honest yeah at least he was straight up and honest with you you can just choose to ignore him yeah i mean that stuff just makes me mad makes me so cross

It's interesting, you know, because this is a really random example, but they're in the realms of spirituality. There's a tiny segment of it called non-duality, right? Okay. Properly small. Well, it's got bigger, but this is the interesting thing about it. Now, if you go to a true teacher of this, of non-duality, they'll say very quickly, there's nothing here for you.

there's nothing here for you okay so what they really mean is there's nothing here for who you think you are that there might be something more behind energetically if you will oh my god so so that means that then therefore there's nothing for the me who i think i am i don't want to get too weird but i'll just quickly say no no i love it there's nothing there so really every time you say what can i do about it they'll say there's nothing you can do they'll say it again and again however

So there are a handful of teachers or more and more these days who call themselves non-duality teachers who are very successful on YouTube. They have like hundreds of thousands of subscribers. But when you listen to them speak, they speak differently.

giving something to me something i can yeah lots of followers the true teachers have very very few followers very few somewhere you know in the realms of like two to 4 000 subscribers on youtube kind of thing and i think the most popular of the true teachers has about 17 000 but he's been doing it since youtube began basically yeah yeah now what that shows me is

that the people who have grown very quickly to half a million subscribers have gone away from the truth of non-duality and gone to only what the people want, which is why... who sell their soul to the devil in the ADHD world can do very, very well by repeating the same nonsense over and over again. And it's the same thing, isn't it? In the non-duality stuff, I'm guessing that they dilute the message, they put it into layman's terms.

And then they only talk about the stuff that gets them reached. So in the ADHD world, that is, you know, we're either talking about the really, really hard things that will get people reach with the people who want to look at the hard things. or the like really toxically positive stuff that you know the the kind of superpower stuff and i hold my hands up i have used that word before and i do believe in some ways that it is i'm not going to say that word specifically but

i have a lot there's a lot of positives for me with adhd there's a hell of a lot of negatives and i try and talk about them both but i think the people who are the problem with content around adhd online i saw someone shared a stat actually that so there's like 52 percent of people or 62% of people don't believe anything they see about ADHD anymore, like on TikTok. That makes sense. They just don't trust it at all. And I think...

I think it's a really difficult thing. And I've been accused before of, you know, you shouldn't be posting this because you're not a doctor and because, like... But there's room for lived experience, isn't there? There's room for us talking about our experience. I talk about it from a business point of view where I have a lot of experience and experience as undiagnosed and diagnosed.

ADHD and yeah I think it's I think if we're only talking about the things that get the likes and views then we're just we're talking about such a tiny tiny segment of it aren't we and is that is that helpful i think that and i agree i totally agree and do you know dr mina chong do you know her oh no the comedian oh yeah sorry yes i do yeah yeah

So she messaged me. No, she didn't. She put a comment on in an argument with someone about this because she's a doctor. And she was saying and someone attacked her for saying something that was not necessarily, you know. in the medical literature, but she was questioned. And then she ended up tagging me and saying, look, people's lived experiences are very valid and really important.

I never really thought about it that much until when she said that. And I try very hard to just say things from my own personal experience. And I try to make it where it's coming from as well. But as another thing that came to mind is... I don't know if you've noticed this, but I've had lots of family members and friends message me in the last year, particularly with like a video linked to a video and saying and usually the message says something like.

well maybe i've got adhd actually and then it'll video and it'll be like basically someone describing being a human being and then yeah yeah you've got adhd there's a lot yeah yeah i saw i've seen one in particular someone said I was late diagnosed but there were signs and the videos of like a pile of clothes and some unopened mail and you know a peloton bike or something like expensive purchases and and and it's like

are you like there is a valid excuse or there is a valid reason for posting that which is that if you're only showing that to people with ADHD It's funny, isn't it? It's funny. It's like, oh my God. Yeah, I've done that. I've done that. I've done that. It's so relatable. But with like context collapse online, where everyone's seeing this stuff. So in the comments, this comment said, I screenshotted some of the comments because they were so Daily Mail.

someone said uh so basically you got diagnosed for being a human being this is getting ridiculous now like people getting so angry because Of course they relate. It's like the whole, you know, see, I'm a silly billy, I forgot my keys again content. Yeah, it might perform really well, but part of it's performing well because it is actually rage. bait to the people to neurotypicals who are like yeah i lose my keys as well like you know and then they're seeing articles like the

one I was in a couple of weeks ago and these, you know, people claiming benefits and taking money out of the system and all of this and you can see why some people would get angry about it, can't you? I was shocked when I saw that.

I mean, I'm still battling it now, I know, I know. So did they message you and say they were going to do it or not? Yeah, so I got an email that morning saying, can we use this video in our player? And I was like, no, absolutely not. You can't. And I actually said, you can't because the information's out of date.

And I couldn't really remember what I'd said in it, but I knew that I talked about waiting times. I actually said in the video four to six months, but now it's more like 12 months. I said, no, you can't. I mean, you can't anyway. And then someone just sent me the link and said, have you seen this? But, you know, they're very clever, aren't they? The email was asking if they could use my video in their video player.

And I said no to that, but that's not what they did. They wrote an article and used a screenshot of my image. I'm still battling it now. My solicitor said, like, it's clearly defamation, but it's just... you know how much energy i think this this is the most upsetting thing about it is just the exhaustion of kind of existing as this like kind of asterisk where you have to explain yourself or you feel like all the time you're under this threat of like not being believed.

or having to having the burden of explaining what ADHD is or prove that you have it or you know and and articles like that are just just really kind of show how prevalent it is that I think there's like 800 comments on it now and they're all along the same lines of you know that I'm so the article was basically saying that I spend my time online teaching people how to The subtext was how to how to fraudulently claim, you know, all you have to do is say you've got ADHD. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was really bad, like really bad. And then words like up to £69,000 and you can bag, so that they can bag free stuff off the government, such as... noise cancelling headphones like whoo they know exactly who they're writing to don't they with that language completely completely and and when i looked up i'm so sorry i'm so sorry that that happened to you

yeah it was a really weird experience and the thing is you know we've all got shit going on haven't we like i've got a load of stuff going on at the moment not least just entering perimenopause with ADHD. And that week, it was the week before last, that week in particular, I just felt like I'd been hit by a ton of bricks. It was just a real like... I need to get through this week. So to have that first thing on a Monday morning, which just completely threw my week, then it was...

The lovely thing that came out of it was I must have had, I don't know, 500 DMs or something, just people being so nice. But that in itself is just really overwhelming. you know exhausting um so yeah know you're doing the right thing know that you're totally honest know that totally that's it we all know that yeah exactly over a hundred thousand people that follow you know that yeah yeah and that that was the nice thing that came out of it it really did spark um

Just some really lovely messages and people, you know, people were outraged for me. So someone in my community said that I've just spent an hour going through all of the comments on there, putting a thumbs down.

That's so lovely. Like, people are just so nice. And the weird thing that comes out of stuff like this is that positive thing of... you know just seeing the the lovely side of humanity that you don't always see unless something like this happens so yeah the other thing is like and I already know this but when the moment that you published it

it just showed that you were innocent. Yeah. Not that there's a guilty or innocent, but you know, you were absolutely operating at all times with pure ethical action. And it was just... I tried to, yeah. Well, you do. And it's obvious. But the thing is, if you were ashamed, if you were like, if you thought there was some truth in it, well, someone, a lot of people, I would probably just hide it. I probably wouldn't show it. Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah. I've had press before where I've...

You know, it's not. And I think that was the thing that this was the first time I've had press where it just it was completely untrue.

It was just absolute lies and fabrication, as you would expect from that particular newspaper or particular, I don't even want to call it a newspaper. I've had press before where I just didn't want... that story going out like when I went through bankruptcy and all of the drama around that you know the local press that I had there's no way I was sharing that because I was

it happened what they were saying was true and I didn't want that out there obviously it's very like exposing and vulnerable but yeah reading something about yourself that is just so untrue and then going through i've gone through the um ipso the independent press standards whatever it is um

And they and I've just gone back to them saying I'm so disappointed in this response. They basically come back. Everything is you've complained about this and this is factually incorrect. We do not uphold this. And I said, not only have I been. defamed in this article but now i've been made to feel like i'm in the wrong for complaining about it it was a really like the wording of it was really awful i feel yeah it's just it's a really disappointing experience

Can you imagine how many complaints or letters like that the Daily Mail receive every day? Oh no, all the time. All the time.

nothing to do with you it's like that's just no yeah yeah it's just it's just not very nice when you feel like you know I've I've literally done nothing wrong I did get them to take the script I got the screenshot taken down I sent them a invoice for 10 grand really and they yeah yeah i just said yeah because the thing is it's it's business content it's not personal content it's commercial content

So they said we've removed it and won't be making a payment. So we're still in discussions around that. Yeah, I got them to actually take it down in the end. Clever. Yeah.

On that, you just mentioned bankruptcy there. We're not going to go into that subject, but I posted something on LinkedIn the other day about having a... basically a chunk of cash in the bank before you go self-employed or if you are self-employed and then you said something very interesting which was but some people find employment so excruciating that it's we don't want to wait for that you want to just dive straight in can you go into more

i thought i actually haven't that's just not the way my brain works but that again the thing is not to say that i'm right and in fact i very rarely believe that i'm right about anything i just say yeah yeah same yeah same i'm like yeah it's just like what yeah my thoughts so tell me more about that i think there's there's two things came up when i read it one was that i've i've never had a year's worth of

money in the bank well I have but not that I've saved up you know I have through like a business sale or whatever but I've never intention I've never I've never started a business you know I've I've done something and then it's led to something else and something else. So I've never been in that position where I've kind of planned.

right now I've got enough money to start a business in fact I've said this so many times before but the day that I left my uh job to start my first business with nothing in the bank was the day that they were queuing up outside Northern Rock to take all their money out during the credit crunch in like 2007, 8, something like that.

So when I first read it, my first thoughts were, A, that, yeah, sometimes being in a job is actually more damaging to your, like, physical, mental health and, like... neuro divergence like your well-being than than being having some anxiety around money and but the other thing that came up to me up for me is that

My version of ADHD actually works really well under pressure. And I think that having a year's worth or six months worth of money in the bank might actually... not make me as... uh like use my impulsiveness and my creativity and it might it might make me a bit lazy I don't know I don't know but when I first started thinking if I had that money would I have would I have

taken the risks that I took and kind of I guess I guess what I'm talking about is hustling which isn't necessarily what we what we want to promote but it's you know it's a necessary part in the beginning isn't it and it's actually

for some people it's a really fun part isn't it when you just get going you're like right like how can we make this you know what you make a good point because there is a tendency for a lot of us to piss around with non-essential activities, especially when there's not someone telling us what to do.

totally and that's why you see people with investment and they're like making these ridiculous decisions like hiring teams and paying for awards and hitting out these fancy offices and you're like can you can someone just do some work please yeah that's what it was like in the early days of the fintech startup yeah it was like that until we got some you know wake-up calls And it was like, oh shit, we really need to get going here. Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? So...

So then, without going into your finances in any way, would you then strategically not have much money saved up in the bank to keep you hungry? Is that what you do? that I don't I mean it's different now I'm you know I've been in business 17 years it's really different now but um I would never If I was working with someone or if I was advising or mentoring someone who wanted to start a business, obviously I'm not going to say to them, oh, I don't like...

who cares you know I would kind of make sure that they understood what their break-even was or that they could get to a point where they were comfortable and confident but I do also see a lot of people putting off starting a business and when i'm talking about a business i'm not talking about starting a fintech business you know i'm i'm talking about people who just want to go freelance because they cannot bear

their job anymore they want to do what they're doing in the job but just for themselves and they don't because they're getting paid a shit wage and you know the living expenses are through the roof and they're all of the other they're buying too many coffees you know all of that stuff that we have to do um and so they never start the thing because they think oh i have to have six months or 12 months when the reality is they could probably finish

their job maybe have a month or two's grace and they could get those clients they could get most people really overestimate their expenses and underestimate their earning potential you know so they're thinking like oh yeah but i need to make i've got 1500 quid a month going out you know i need to make 1500 quid and i'm talking about

people who maybe this is their first venture into business you know i'm not necessarily talking about entrepreneurs more the kind of freelancers and yeah i think that there's a real danger of of of kind of waiting for that over security when actually the not having that buffer in the bank can just keep you hungry and and make sure that you do the things to get the clients or to to start selling the shit you know

What do the majority of your clients look like in that regard? Are they new or are they people that have been doing it a while that want to do things differently? Yeah, doing it a while, want to do things differently. generally late diagnosed.

and have been through like the burnout you know the the had multiple businesses that either have or haven't worked and just want to do things differently it's it's It just breaks my heart to see how many people are still, you know... we do this this because we should like this is how you do business business looks like xyz you have a business plan and then you get an office and you grow a team and you're thinking about an exit and you know you have to grow year on year like yeah

For me, it wasn't long ago that someone would go in Dragon's Den and they'd be, oh, this is a lifestyle business, you know?

brilliant i want a lifestyle business i i just have designed a lifestyle business by choice i don't want teams offices i want to be at home with my son i want to be able to take him to soft play on a wednesday morning and you know i want that lifestyle business that is that is what i'm actively creating and i've been in business a long time you know that this isn't me going oh i'm gonna start something small and see how it goes like i'm

I'm like Benjamin Button. I am exactly the same. I totally agree. Totally agree. Yeah. You know, it's funny watching Dragon's Den again is a totally unrealistic thing for people who want entrepreneurs because, you know, You go in Dragon's Den and you've got some, you know, you want 25 grand. in investment and they go i want 50 of your business that's just never going to happen if you go to any investor i mean yeah in in the fintech company we raised millions of euros

I mean, talking like six, seven million euros. And we only gave away about 13% of the company. Yeah. Yeah. It's ridiculous. That's just the way it works.

like in a fast growth business and i would not recommend that for any person with adhd by the way you can try it if you want but i'll tell you the main reason i wouldn't do it you we had about 20 investors and they're like it's like having 20 parents constantly on your shoulder it's insane our coo basically his job ended up just becoming full-time investor management that's all he did just making sure they were happy all the time

Which meant he wasn't working on the product, which is what he was supposed to be doing. Yeah. It's a really broken model, isn't it? I mean, Dragon's Den is just ridiculous, isn't it? It's a joke.

It's X Factor for business. It's not even for business, is it? It's just a PR machine, isn't it? And the way that it's kind of developed over the years, it's just... just hello and the characters that they all play but yeah I couldn't imagine anything I've been in situations where I've been looking for investment or I've received small amounts of investment and I know myself well enough now to know that I wouldn't do well.

in that situation i don't like i've invested in companies and i struggle with that relationship you know with that dynamic um so yeah i i One of the main realisations I had when I got my diagnosis was why I struggled to work with people and struggle with that kind of... It just used to feel like a minefield and it's the kind of RSD triggers, especially in an agency. You've got client comms, unhappy clients, people coming and going. Opinions as well.

Like opinions, people, noise, like pressure, constant pressure. It's just having that diagnosis and realising that I wasn't going mad and I didn't have to make this work. you know i didn't it wasn't my job to make this thing that clearly didn't work for me work there was another way of doing it was the the best that like on so many levels was and what does that what does it look like

What does an ADHD business look like for you, in your opinion? Just don't worry about for anyone else, but just how it would look for you. Yeah, for me. So I call it a brain-first business. like writing a book and stuff at the moment and for me it's a tricky one because I actually feel that we should all be doing business this way but let's just start with ADHD people because it's really important.

And we look at people who, so for example, me, I've been in business 17 years. My first business I had for like seven, eight years, ended in bankruptcy. You're straight back to square one. Then I had a few more businesses. The next one that did really well, I sold a couple of businesses in the meantime, smaller businesses. Then the next one that did well was the agency, which grew like over COVID and stuff.

And it caused, for those 13 years of my life where I was undiagnosed, were just basically a blur. like it was just so unhealthy and I know you can relate to this like the way that I was living I was just living for work and I knew that I wanted kids and someone had told me when I was 20 someone else in business said I was 30, sorry. So be careful because you'll wake up one day and you'll be 40.

And you won't have had kids. And I was like, that's such a ridiculous thing to say. And she was so right. You know, it just goes by in a blur and everything is like, if I can just get past next week.

then I'll be all right or if I can just get around this and get this catching then I'll be all right and it's this constant the highs and the lows and the the the drive for external validation then when you get it you feel amazing you're in god mode and then when it gets taken away and it's just like absolutely crushing And it just doesn't have to be like that. Like we live in, I feel like when we're undiagnosed, we live in this prove mode.

we're like trying to prove everyone like to whoever it is like the teachers or the family or the siblings or who you know our school friends or we're just constantly trying to prove that they were wrong and that we can achieve something we can do it and we can stick to it and we can like stick to our promises and and we very often

can't because we put ourselves in these situations where we're trying to do things that are really hard for us to do you know I learned this I don't know if you saw my post yesterday on um

linked in but i learned this term recently about a lot of adhd people being autodidactic learners yeah yeah yeah i commented on it Oh, yeah, of course you did. So rather than learning from being taught, we learn by doing, reading, consuming content. And I likened it to... I was saying about how frustrating it used to be when I had a team and people would ask me questions. And I realised that that sounds awful because I am the, you know, boss, I am the company.

But coming to me with a question before you've gone to Google, a Google-able question feels... and I didn't know this at the time but I was likening it to like being with your short mate in the supermarket and you can easily reach something on the top shelf but you're asking them to you know and that was my whole experience while I was undiagnosed was

like why does this feel so hard for me why does every why can't i focus on this spreadsheet that someone's trying to talk me through and i can't even i'm struggling to even pretend to be interested and it's about my company finances You know, and that's really hard. There's a lot of shame around that. I've had a lot, you know, I've lost like family relationships and there's a lot of things.

and maybe this goes back to the content thing there's a lot that we don't talk about because it's either traumatic for us to talk about or or feels like deeply personal but Things that would probably help other people and make them feel supported and not so alone and not so kind of shamed by these things. It sounds like our ADHD manifests in the same way.

actually yeah from everything you've been saying on this episode and like the like even just the idea of trying to read a spreadsheet to me is feels fills me with dread so i just don't do it i love creating them though i love creating a spreadsheet I just can't, there's something about me that's like, I have to do it myself.

And that kind of goes through to everything, which I find it really, really hard to work with anyone now. I have to do it myself. I'm exactly the same. I can't quite put my finger on what that is. I know it's like there's an exhaustion to the communicating. And I've worked with some amazing people. I've worked with some awful people, but I've worked with some really, really amazing people. And I just really struggle to make it work because I can't.

I don't know. Yeah, I've never quite put my finger on what it is. Well, this is not changing the subject, but my favourite author, or one of them, is Nassim Taleb, and he's a very cantankerous man.

But he wrote the book Anti-Fragile, amongst many others. And in it, that's where I learned the term autodidact. And there's a part in it where he talks about, so he's very, very, very knowledgeable about Rome and ancient Greece and blah, blah, blah. And he says in Roman times. specific specialized education was only given to slaves right because the education was paid for by the state because they wanted the slaves to do what they wanted them to do and he said

Nowadays, public education paid for by the state in the West resembles the type of education that was given to slaves in Roman times. And the free man, which were mostly men, unfortunately, back then.

were autodidacts they were free to learn what they wanted to do in the way they wanted to learn it because they knew the slaves could do the specialized work leaving them to be free to be creative architects do whatever it might have been right so and it's interesting because i was thinking oh my gosh that's so similar to the difference between a full-time employee and an entrepreneur now i'm not calling full-time employees slave not gonna say that but

um to be to be an autodidact and if that's and he even talks about adhd in the book there's a little bit in it where he says like basically he would have been diagnosed with if it wasn't for various reasons And I think one of them was that he was so free as a child to explore his own curiosities that nobody ever picked up that there was anything quite right, if you will. Because it's only not quite right.

in the structured confines of how society's been built based on the foundation of an education system that once in Roman times was only available to slaves. Think about it. So that society has been structured in such a way that people with ADHD don't quite fit in. And the answer to that is to label them disabled. But if society had been crafted in the opposite way...

then they wouldn't be. No. And then... I don't even know if I want to open up this topic, but then that's why the whole medication debate is to, you know, especially with kids in schools, is to medicate them so that they can comply with these rules.

and yeah that's uh yeah that's a real a real eye-opener isn't it yeah it's it's so true though it's like ADHD for me isn't a problem. It's the rules and the confines that we're meant to live within, isn't it? I always use this example and this is how ridiculous life is. How the hell am I meant to remember when my MOT's due?

Yeah. Why is that down to me to remember that? Like, I am never going to remember when my MOTs do. Like, why can't, and I know that there's, you get reminders and stuff now. I just book it in at the last minute every time in the garage. You're like, oh, we can. fit you in for an mot but not a service you're gonna have to come back for the service yeah every month on and then i don't do that

For six months. And then ADHD tax. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I've sold a car without an MOT before because I just assumed it to a friend as well. Do you know if there's no MOT? But yeah, things like that. And business is a great example of this. It's never been easier to start a business. You can, you know, set up a Shopify or a Squarespace or set up an Instagram account or whatever. Essentially, you've got a business.

you could go out and get clients you can deliver the work you can do all of that stuff it's going to become a point where you have to start telling someone that you're doing this and you know filing and registering and all of that stuff

And that to an ADHD brain is a fucking nightmare, isn't it? It's like, you know, so we're such brilliant entrepreneurs. We've got all these skills that make us... outstanding at the things that we're brilliant at but the things that we're that we struggle with the business of business the detail of business means that we lose so much talent and so much possibility and innovation in the world because it feels almost impossible to get started because what if you

aren't at the point where you can you know outsource that stuff or you don't have someone to trust I've seen I've done it myself I've outsourced that stuff to someone that not necessarily hasn't been trustworthy but I haven't been able to manage because I've assumed that that's their job that's what they're doing and I think that that's where we come unstuck in business is

You know, we're great at the starting bit. We're brilliant at that upfront stuff. But once you get into the weeds of running the business, that's really, really tricky for some of us. I mean, and that goes back to that Benjamin Button comment that you made earlier, which is about if you try to keep the business intentionally small and lean.

then yeah and that's your principle that you set out with then you can build a business that's very very friendly for an adhd brain and not just adhd but just a brain that works differently yeah

Yeah, I think it's really possible. And I guess the hard bit about my job is convincing, or not convincing people, but helping people.

to believe or to see that that's possible for them in a world where we've been told that business looks like this one thing and that if you're not growing year on year you're not a success and if you're not you know getting awards or whatever you whatever you deem depending on how much time you spend on LinkedIn whatever you deem success to be you know that that that isn't what maybe that isn't what success looks like for you.

It might be what it looks like for them, but success for me is about, you know, it's actually about having a really small life. I saw this great, I might be going off on a tangent here, but I saw this great quote recently that was...

uh have you are you really healed or have you just built a life to avoid your triggers and it really out out that reminds me of my favorite person in the world my favorite is michael singer which i'm pretty sure i mentioned but you know it's that's what all of his teachings are about yeah yeah it's so true but someone i posted about it someone in the comments said yeah that's exactly what i've done and it's made my life really small and i was like

i'm i am intentionally going for a small life i really want and i didn't want that you know 10 years ago i was like well that shows you a sense of inner security right yeah insecurity That sounded weird. Inner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The insecurity is, has like hopefully gone, you know, it's, it's sorry, my dog's just come in.

no problem um yeah i think it's it's a lot to do with like having a kid now and you know being a parent and having all that having that contentment that I don't have it's it's not about external validation and actually when I find when I do slip into recognizing that I'm chasing external validation

Even with something as silly as, you know, Instagram or content, if I realise that I'm affected by a piece of content that doesn't perform very well, which I know sounds ridiculous, but if I realise that I'm impacted by that.

then I really quickly know that I have to start doing something different. You know, I have to like... get away from my desk and think about like get outside and just get some perspective on that's good very good yeah and very very good advice for a lot of people listening to this because they'll be trying to manage adhd without medication so they don't have that

extra assistance if they need it you know um the other thing i was going to say is so i recommend that everyone with adhd really but particularly people who are um feel that they are being sort of mimicking and I mean that not in a nasty not in a bad way yeah yeah mimicking other people's wants and desires because and I would recommend everyone read or watch a video of René Girard

He was a philosopher, French philosopher, who coined mimetic desire, the term mimetic desire, which basically just is a human thing where we basically just become like those around us.

and use the sense of what really matters to us which is something you just mentioned which is like yeah are your goals yours or are they superimposed you've seen on social media because i bet you all the money in my bank account most of us our goals will actually be basically because of what someone else says yeah and we totally lose track and we will end up so unfulfilled and the reason why i say go and read him or watch a video is when you learn how it works it becomes easier to avoid it

Nice. I'm going to watch that. It's something I'm really conscious about. It's one of the key things I work with clients on, actually, because when you ask someone their goals and they say to you, 10k month or 20k month or uh and you're like oh interesting that's like a really round number where's that yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah oh oh well i used to work with this person and they were saying that you know because i'd done

Because I did like 15K, then it has to be 20. All right, okay. So, and what impact is that going to have on... you know, the things you've told me that are important, which is being home for your dog or, you know, being able to care for your sick dad when he needs you or, you know, and people don't really... I had a call with my...

membership community a couple of weeks ago and we were planning out the month ahead and I was talking about how it's just really important it was like January so some of them were like right you know new new year like let's go kind of thing and some of them weren't I wasn't I never feel like that in January and I was saying how important it is to you know be realistic when we're planning these numbers because often what we'll do

as ADHD people, is have these really ambitious goals and then executive function kind of gets in the way and says, you know, or self-trust even. We set these huge goals. And then because we know that we're probably not going to get there, they feel really safe because then we can say, oh, if I'd have done a bit more marketing, I could probably have hit it. Or, you know, if only I'd had more time, I could definitely have got there.

keep ourselves safe with this gap. And someone on the call said, I'm such an idiot. She was like, I've just written, I'm just looking at this number that's my goal for getting people into my group. And she said, I've got no idea where it's come from. So just I honestly couldn't tell you where it's come from. And she like.

slashed it by about literally by about 75% she just said you know it just feels so much better now because I know that that's achievable and then anything I do on top of that is like a huge win isn't it so good that's so good yeah we just don't think about stuff logically we feel like You know, I like neurotypical business standards and neurotypical standards and not enough people understand that they are, you know, you.

this process of like step one two three four five six seven eight nine ten and we just don't have to yes of course there's things we have to do we have to pay our taxes unfortunately and we have to you know and stay legal and all of that stuff but outside of that it's it's your business like do whatever you want in whatever way you want and that permission i think the the

acceptance of the way our brains work and that's having that self-compassion gives us permission to be able to do that but I think without that awareness and acceptance it's really hard to

to see the changes, let alone make them. Yeah, that resonates with me because I find goals demotivating most of the time. Yeah. And for the last probably five years, I've just operated using the systems.

thing that james clear spoke about in atomic addicts i don't know if you've read it yeah yeah and it was like that just makes sense to me like if i just do stuff every day that's good i try to be good then money will come and does come and it stays so and I and I every time actually the thing is every time I've hit and one of the reasons I do this is every time I've hit a goal I've been extremely disappointed with the feeling yeah you know

And also, because I've become so much more self-aware from so much meditation over the last few years, it's amazing how quickly the burst of energy from, say, a large amount of money landing in your bank account dissipates. Like it could be like five minutes and it's gone. Like the feeling's gone. So you're like, oh, this feels amazing. And then five minutes later, it's just nothing. But okay, yeah, this is not right. There's not, life's not about this.

That's really interesting then. Do you think your approach would be the same if you didn't have that buffer in the bank? How would your approach to business be if you didn't have that security of cash in the bank? but i would be more frantic yeah i'd be more more fast i would be a lot more productive i think and right now i'm very i'm more focused on a lot more focused on working slowly, like intentionally.

which is yeah trying it anyway and like doing really weird things like that some you know neurotypical people in a job would find crazy like working from sort of like 7 30 in the morning until say 11 and then taking off from 11 till 3 completely off but then going back to work again or like yeah or just just and then just mixing that that up again completely just doing it really just to see what happens and and it's yeah like

It's so much easier for me to do the work if I know that from 11 till 3 there's nothing happening. So I could play my guitar, I can go for a walk, I can play with the kids, read a book, and then I'd come back to the work again. And actually coming back to the work again at three until, say, 4.30 or something, I am extremely productive in that time. Extremely.

It's like I'm sort of done with the reading and the walking and the playing guitar. I'm fulfilled in that way. And then the work is just great. Yeah. I was literally having this conversation with a client yesterday who was saying that... oh I've been I've had a really like unproductive week and she said yesterday I spent two hours on the sofa and I just felt so awful and I ended up working from four till eight in the end and I got loads done I said what about if like

that's how you work what about if you know you do that bit in the morning that you said and then rather than spending two hours on the sofa feeling guilty thinking I should be working I should be working making you just want to stay on the sofa even more you just didn't work those two hours which would probably mean you would get out and enjoy yourself and see a friend or you know go for a coffee or do something you actually wanted to do rather than

sitting on the sofa feeling guilty yeah and then do you work in the evening which you enjoy and it's when you have energy and you know and it's it's these things that we're We really screw ourselves over, don't we? By like that two hours in the day for her was just completely wasted.

just wasted time of feeling guilty and telling herself stories about what this mean she is and how bad at business she is because she should be up working at a desk and you know it's it's we really need to apply that

that logic and forgiveness and and yeah for me it's about just putting our brains first because if we don't i know firsthand what happens if you don't put your brain first i've had nervous breakdown I've spent 10 weeks in my childhood bed at my family at my parents home you know talking about

some very dark thoughts that i was having like i know what happened what the results are and it's that's it's never going to be sustainable success it's never going to be sustainable happiness or the life that you want it's always going to come you might find success but it's always going to come at the cost of your health well-being and and lifestyle and that's not no one wants to sit on their deathbed and think well you know i'm i'm glad that i've posted

5,000 images to Instagram. Yeah. who cares perfect well what a wonderful way to end the episode there i'm afraid i'm gonna have to go i've got something coming up in a second and i was like i want to keep going but i've really got to go yeah but we need to talk we've got to do this there's a lot more to talk about

definitely yeah there's a lot more so we'll we will do it again for everyone listening again is there anything that you want to say like just before you go for people that are listening just just that just to echo that message of like please please know that there is a way of doing things whether that's business um can't speak for a job because that's harder but you know particularly business life there's a way of doing things that will work for you and I know

We talk about the positives a lot, but I know the negatives. I know that it's not all positive, but there is a way of finding, you know, finding a way that will work for you. Fucking great. Great. Thanks, Joe. Amazing. Thank you so much. Cheers. All right. Speak to you soon. Wait a minute. What am I doing?