Neurodivergent entrepreneur challenges
I wanted to talk about my experience as a neurodivergent business owner because while we're actually more likely to start our own businesses, I think it's probably more because traditional forms of employment often fail us than it being something we're naturally gifted at. That's not to say we don't have some strengths and I'm going to walk you through both the good and the bad.
Firstly, this blog today is based on a YouTube video I put out. If you would prefer to watch instead of read, you can find the video here:
I am diagnosed with ADHD and have recently had some lovely AuDHD-ers (ADHD and autism if you don't know the term) very kindly asking me if I'm sure it's just the one so I have some unpacking to do there. But I'm definitely neurodivergent either way.
I'm also, as you may have guessed from the title, an entrepreneur and business owner. I have cofounders for one of my business which of course makes things 10 times easier but today I'm going to focus on the one I fly solo on and that's Through The Noise Coaching.
So I'd been toying around with the idea of starting a business long before I made the plunge. I actually was interested after taking a business studies add on module during my third year of university. One of the benefits of doing a Maths degree at my university was that they let us choose the odd module from a different subject each year and business studies interested me. As part of that we did a chapter on entrepreneurship and I loved it.
Unfortunately when I excitedly told a friend that I was interested in becoming an entrepreneur someday he told me that he thinks you have to be a certain kind of person to be an entrepreneur and made it pretty clear that he thought I wasn't it. In hindsight my reaction at the time wasn't actually too strong. For some reason I just accepted he was right and dismissed that idea completely which was ridiculous. He was the only friend I spoke to about it and because he said no I wrote it off for literally 8 years before I came back to it again.
It took me until 8 years after graduation to come back to entrepreneurship after one comment from a friend
But I did come back. I was coaching for about a year alongside my corporate role before I made the jump fully into entrepreneurship and I can sit here and honestly say I love being an entrepreneur. But it’s also really, really hard. So today I wanted to go into both the good and the bad and my experience as a neurodivergent business owner.
As I was preparing my thoughts for today’s post I kind of realised that this is a much bigger topic than I originally anticipated so I’ve decided to split it into two. Today I’m going to be talking about more of the big picture stuff of the business and then next week I’ll dive into some of the day to day practicalities of being a neurospicy entrepreneur. So let’s get it underway.
To start with, one of the things I love about it is the variety. This morning I’m filming a series of YouTube videos, this afternoon I might be writing something for my mailing list or chatting with a potential new client to assess our fit for each other. In between all of these tasks I’m doing the coaching that I love and having real positive impact on people’s lives. I actually genuinely enjoy most of these tasks but too much of any one can be draining and the ability to work on something vastly different that still works towards building my business is such a great way to keep the dopamine up in my brain.
Doing the same thing all day has always been a struggle for me and I’ve always tried to change things up as much as I can in previous jobs to try and counter this, but this time it’s baked into the role. There’s so much I have to do as an entrepreneur that I usually can’t focus on one thing all day even if I wanted to, so it's a good job that I never actually want to.
There are so many things to do and I love the chaos
Now there is a downside to this; namely that it’s possible to get overwhelmed and have no idea what to do next. I know it’s often said that this is a common trait with ADHD - we can see the big picture but we often don’t know where to start. This is where our support network is so important. I’m so lucky to have so many amazing coaches in my network that whenever I feel lost I turn to one of them for help processing where to go next. And actually this entire channel started off the back of one of those lost coaching sessions.
Sometimes though the answer is that I genuinely need some direct “how to” information and need to go with an instructor. This is where things get a bit tricky. There is so much information out there teaching us how we should run our businesses and it’s very hard to sort through the noise and find out what’s actually useful. It’s double hard when most of the guidance out there is aimed at NTers.
I’ve unfortunately wasted more time and money than I would like following courses that just didn’t work for me and feeling like I was a failure for it. That’s not to say there aren’t gems out there because I have found them, and I suspect a lot of the ones that work for me are ND created, but it has been a bit of a challenge to find the right direction to move forward in at times and I’ve definitely struggled emotionally after following a course with glowing reviews that has done nothing for me.
This naturally leads me to talking about Big Emotions. When I look back through my life, one of the biggest tells of my ADHD that I can spot is my emotional dysregulation. This means that on a good day in business I’m on top of the world, I’m excited, I’m telling my friends and family all about it. But on a bad day, I am really low.
The big emotions are a difficult part to handle in business
One of the most common difficulties with this, especially at the start, was with my rejection sensitivity. Again, this is a textbook part of ADHD, not handling rejection very well. But to be in business you need to sell your business’s products and it is a fundamental truth of selling that you’re going to get rejections. And a lot of them.
I’m going to do a whole video talking about rejection sensitivity in leadership and entrepreneurship because I think it’s a much bigger topic to dive into but let’s just say that I’ve put a lot of work into facing rejection sensitivity. It gets better, but I haven’t yet got it to go away completely.
As with everything ADHD though, there are two sides and the Big Emotions that mean rejection sensitivity knocks me on my butt are the Big Emotions that soar when things are going well. One of my favourite parts of my business is when my clients have breakthroughs. The best ones are the ones that happen in coaching sessions when I see the lightbulb go off but I also love when I get a text or an email in between telling me about their win. I get so excited for them that I am on top of the world and so thrilled at being part of their journey.
I’m also so boosted by positive feedback. I’ve received testimonials that make me emotional and have had my day made by people sending me a message to let me know that I made an impact on their life. So while the big emotions definitely can suck, they also give me these highs that I would never trade to avoid the lows.
I love the opportunities I get for learning things I’d never get chance to otherwise
I also get excited about the learning. One thing to know about me is that I LOVE learning. I ask questions at the opticians, and have always been eagerly absorbing the information my physiotherapists shared with me whenever I’ve had injuries. As an entrepreneur you’re faced with endless learning opportunities and you get to decide which ones to go down. Some of them of course are mandatory but for the most part, you decide what you learn, what you focus on and what you outsource. There are even topics that I thought I’d hate when I tackled them as a whole (hello social media marketing) but I’ve loved when I’ve found a niche that works for me.
This goes hand in hand with my ADHD interest based attention because I get to follow my interests and absorb so much information so quickly. It’s also feeding my hyperfixations - I’ve been in a hyperfixation of going deeper and deeper into neurodivergence for a while now and each time I feed that hyperfixation I am adding to my knowledge that improves my business and I love that I get to do that as my job.
And that’s the note that I actually want to end this post on; that despite the challenges I love being an entrepreneur. Now as I said at the start, this doesn’t cover anything, I actually have many more points that I want to cover but they are more day to day challenges and I wanted to present an overall picture today.
If this resonates with you and feel you would be interested in talking to an adhd and autism-friendly coach, feel free to get in touch. If you’re looking for more blog posts, you can find them here.
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