Welcome back to ADHD-ish! In this episode, my guest Ian Wilson, a creative agency owner of over 16 years, is what I call a natural-born entrepreneur.

From hustling for his first job at age eleven to building a unique partnership with his neurodivergent business partner Eric, Ian sheds light on why traditional approaches to team building rarely work for people whose brains are wired a bit differently.

We’ll hear how Ian and Eric’s complementary neurotypes—ADHD and autism - have enabled them to build a successful agency grounded in autonomy, mastery, and ownership.

Ian shares lessons learned on building a team of “hurricane chasers,” hiring for attitude over experience, and why the bold move of unapologetically charging what you’re worth doesn’t just benefit the business—it creates a thriving company culture.

Whether you’re a founder who is churning and burning team members or a solopreneur anticipating that first hire, this episode is packed with practical advice, refreshing honesty, and plenty of laughs about what happens when you fully embrace the ADHD-ish way of doing business.

Three key takeaways:

• Self-awareness and self-acceptance matter more than “best practices.” Knowing what you’re brilliant at—and what you hate—makes it so much easier to build a business (and find team members) that complement your strengths and support your growth.
• Hire for traits, not just skills. Ian’s team isn’t made up of “perfect resumes” but of entrepreneurial thinkers who enjoy solving problems and don’t need to be micromanaged. Find the ones who vibe with your approach and love challenging themselves to figure things out.
• Be bold about your value. Ian & Eric tell prospects: “We’re probably the most expensive quote you’ll get—and here’s why.” Setting unapologetic boundaries not only draws the right clients but also creates a culture of excellence and transparency.

Mic Drop Moment:

Ian & Eric deliberately hire people who crave these three things, no matter their resume. Their neurodivergent advantage? Investing in traits, not credentials.

• Autonomy: Freedom to do things your way.
• Mastery: The drive to get better and own your craft.
• Ownership: Feeling like your contributions actually matter.

About today’s guest, Ian Wilson:

Ian is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of buildcreate, a full-service B2B marketing agency for manufacturing, technology, engineering, and industrial clients in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Home-schooled and entrepreneurial from childhood, Ian discovered his ADHD as an adult. He and his business partner, Eric Lynch, who is autistic, have discovered that their secret sauce as neurodivergent leaders is to hire smart people and let them work to their strengths.

Connect with Ian:

LinkedIn- Company Website - Email

Your ADHD-ish host, Diann Wingert

Diann Wingert brings decades of experience as a psychotherapist and serial business owner and is now a sought-after coach to entrepreneurs with ADHD traits.

Diann is a fierce advocate for self-acceptance and meaningful growth at the intersection of neurodivergence and entrepreneurship. She is the creator of the ADHD-ish Method and host of the top-rated ADHD-ish podcast.

Mentioned during this episode:

Ep # 303: Which Company Culture is Your ADHD Brain Building?

Links:

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Know another entrepreneur with ADHD who thinks there is only one way to build a team - the neurotypical way? Share this episode.

Ready to work with an ADHD-informed business strategist and coach? Visit my website.

© 2026 ADHD-ish Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Melody Loops/ Outro music by Vladimir / Bobi Music / All rights reserved.

H: Ian, you have been running your own business for over 16 years. But I want us to go back, I want us to go on the way back machine because I don't think from everything I've learned about you, I really don't think you ever had any choice about being an entrepreneur. I think it was inevitable so tell me about the earliest money making thing you remember doing because I think you were like 8 years old.

G: Yeah, I think the, when I was 8 there was some coffin dressing and maybe a little bit of jackhammering, maybe eight or nine. But really it was when I was 11 and I wanted to build my own computer and I wanted a moped because I was sick of riding my bike. Oh, I've been riding this bike for like 10 years, oh my God, I'm so old now, I need so many new wheels. So I got all the classifieds, as you do in the 90s and, and found an ad for just working at a barn, helping take care of horses at a dressage stable and called up the lady and for some reason she gave an 11 year old child who called her a job.

H: Astonishing. The first time you started to tell me about your early life history, I'm like, oh my God, aren't there child labor laws where you grew up? I mean, and also most kids that age and most kids that are at 11 are either asking their parents for an allowance or maybe a paper route. But you got at the fricking classifieds and talked yourself into a job at a barn. Where did you even, how did you even think that that was an option for an 11 year old?

G: My siblings as teenagers, not at 11, but had worked cleaning other like horse barn things. It was always in my orbit as like that kind of job option. But honestly, having kids now, I'm like, what? Why? How? Like it doesn't make any sense to me at all, honestly, like, it's bizarre. But I just always, I just want things and I kind of figure out, okay, what do I have to do to get them? And then, and then just figure it out. Just gotta keep making those phone calls, I guess.

H: And I think that the more adults with ADHD that I get to know, certainly the entrepreneurial ones, this notion that I want things, things take money, therefore I need to figure out how to make money rather than stealing it, borrowing it, begging for it. It's just, we just kind of realize that we want to make our own money and we don't have any reservations about doing it, it's just a matter of how. So let's fast forward just a few years now you're in college and you meet the person who becomes your business partner, Eric. Now, you've shared with me previously that he is on the autism spectrum. And you, a few years ago, realized that you are ADHD from the outside, most people would think that could be a real shit show. So over time, and I think maybe pretty early on, you and Eric figured out you actually need each other because of the different ways your brain operate separately and together. Let's talk about that.

G: Yeah, we have really different perspectives and ways of showing up in the world and they definitely piss each other off a lot sometimes. Well, maybe not so much now, because now, you know, we fully embrace all of our differences and we fully realize that we need each other and we're completely inseparable and we would just, it just would work. But back then, I mean, it was, yeah, we definitely got in each other's skin a lot. And we lived together through college and we had seasonal work doing laundry, and when the U of M students went home in the summer, we had to find other ways to make money and he had like a surveying gig with an engineering company.

But apart from that, we did moving, student move out and move in and, you know, cleaning out people's houses when someone, you know, they want to move or people just in the community we lived in, just finding whatever odd jobs we could, working the community connections and just kind of making our way through it. Just a couple of awkward homeschool vibe kind of kids just showing up. What unified us is our, like, our work ethic of we're just gonna get it done. There's no, I don't know how to do this. There's no, you know, yeah, we'll ask questions, but there was no questioning whether we were gonna do it or not. We're just gonna do it and you're gonna pay us for it and, you know, we'll figure out the rest along the way.

H: It's one of the reasons why I think folks with ADHD are perceived by others as being either bullshit artists or just completely audacious because the fact that we don't know how to do something or that we've never done it before never seems to stop us. If we have decided to do something, we figure it out. It's this everything's figureoutable way of moving through life. And yes, we make mistakes, and yes, some of them are very costly and cringe. But most of the time when we put our mind to something, we succeed at it, because the fact that we literally don't know what the fuck we're doing is not an obstacle, it's a challenge.

So at some point along the way, you started thinking of the business you've created and the team that you've assembled. And that's what we're going to be talking quite a bit about coming up, as, you know, assembling a team of people who are hurricane chasers. And Eric is the person that you describe, and I want to quote you from a previous conversation, Eric is the person who makes sure the hurricane goes in the right direction. I love that so much. You're the hurricane, right?

G: Yes, very much.

H: Clearly, we've had enough time together for you to know that you're the hurricane. We were like dancing twisters in our first conversation and Eric is the person who sort of directs the hurricane to go in the right direction. And the other people you've assembled around you are people who are not terrified of hurricanes. They're hurricane chasers, they don't flee. They don't run in the other direction, they actually dig this. How does the division of labor actually look between you and Eric, knowing that you're the hurricane and he's the one who's directing the energy of it?

G: It's nice because what I love the most about it, you know, before my diagnosis and even more so after, is just knowing that I have someone there who can hold me accountable and just be like, okay, you can, you know, if you need to go down a rabbit hole, whatever, that's fine. But, like, this is what needs to be done, and here's when it needs to be done by or we're out of a job. You know, my personal life, you hope you can find a partner or a spouse or somebody that can be that accountability partner for you, but that's, you know, that's not always the case. But just having him at work, I call him my hetero life mate because, like, we're just.

Were just so bound up together and, like, without me, he would have a lot less fun, you know, he would not have learned. Expanded his musical taste and, you know, learned about the joys of just sitting in random bars and talking to random people and just, like, seeing where things go. And following a random drunk lady on an adventure through town and just sort of like playing bodyguards for a night or something. But, yeah, it's really in terms of division of labor, I'd say that he runs the business side of the business. He keeps the business from going under. He keeps a track of the money and the time.

So he's like, we need to log our time. He keeps track of the math of the business and make sure the math adds up so that way I don't have to think about it. I can just go and do, do this thing, do it really well. And that's really part of what has made us so successful, is that I'm just able to go and hold us to the standard of we're going to do the very best we can. And if we can't do our very best, then it's like, is it really worth doing?

And, you know, sometimes you don't always get the luxury of that. You have to you got to do some work sometimes where you're like, put in the bucket. That's fine, we got a bucket for a reason. But he makes sure that the bills are paid and that I don't do something disastrous because I'm yeah, luckily I don't have to know what that would be like because it's never happened. So lucky me, I feel very fortunate, I know he's like, feels the same way. Which is kind of like our year end review. Every year is like, thank you for being the person you are in the business, because that way I don't have to do that, so it works out really well.

H: That level of good fortune, really, we could say it's luck, Ian. And I know you have shared with me that you feel like I'm a pretty lucky motherfucker in a lot of ways, but I really do think the success of your partnership with Eric rests on your level of self awareness and your level of self acceptance and the fact that you truly recognize, and this is before you even had the language for neurodivergent is like, you know who you are, you know how you are and you accept all of it. And when we can do that, we can really do that. Not that we don't embarrass ourselves or feel guilty or ashamed, but when we say, these are the things I'm like ridiculously good at, but I fucking hate that stuff. This dude, on the other hand, like, totally nerds out on the stuff I hate, but doesn't want to be me.

And that's not luck, that is self awareness and self acceptance and being able to find another person who isn't ADHD but is an ADHD enthusiast as you were, saying, I call them enthusiasts. So before you even knew neurodivergent, because you're six years into the diagnosis. You and Eric very intentionally anchored your whole company around three concepts, three interlocking concepts. And the way you built the team and the way you run your business and even the way you two co lead it.

Those concepts are autonomy, mastery and ownership. And when you shared that with me, I wrote it down immediately because I've never, I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs like us. I've never had anyone describe building their team with those three concepts in mind. Now, I know you and Eric have worked with a coach for quite some time, so my initial thought was, did you learn that from your coach? But I don't think that's the origin of those concepts, is it?

G: No, actually Eric, I asked him after our first conversation and I was like, hey, can you like fact check this for me because I couldn't remember. I thought he read it in an article in like Forbes or something, or he said it was from a TED Talk. Either way, it was about what motivates employees other than salary. Because we've worked for some shitty people and for peanuts, for shitty people and also for peanuts. And so it was really like what motivates people when you don't have the money to pay them a lot because as a small agency, you're just, you're not.

I'm not offering top salaries here. You know, benefits are a whole other thing that you can do your best on, but it's always going to be a struggle. And the autonomy, mastery and ownership is what he sort of said but it also just rang so true for us. It's like we want to be able to do things our way because we're going to walk into a situation and we may not know a thing about what's going on or how it works when we first walk in. But within like an hour, we're going to have our own ideas about how it should be done. And then just being able to pursue mastery, like the whole 10,000 hours thing. Like he was a fine arts major and put in many, many hundreds of hours while we lived together on life drawing and color theory and all that stuff.

And so we both had that drive to achieve that kind of mastery and of craft and ownership. Like when you have control over your own destiny or a piece of something, you feel like your opinion matters like that just, it makes it all worth it. We had some degree of those at some jobs, but then at the end of the day it's like, that's a rug that can be pulled out from under you when you work for someone else. And the rug was pulled out from under us. And that was when we decided to start this agency. And it's those three things, I associate them with the start of our coaching because that was one of the things we wrote on our giant.

So I have to give her a lot of credit for like really a work life balance was a new at that time too. So that was like kind of the buzzword, but that. So those things really all kind of anchored us as our guiding principles. And I think that I give her credit for guiding us and honing our instincts along the way, but I have to give us credit for like really sticking to our principles at every step of the way, even when, you know, there were times when we should have had given people less autonomy. But we always held those things really dear to us, really near to our hearts and our purpose because that's how we want to be treated and how we like to work.

And your style of leadership is what the organizational psychologists refer to as the culture of the business. And there's apparently only four of them, I recently did another episode on this. And the style that you create is the family culture or sometimes referred to as the clan culture, which basically, even though you and Eric are the owners, you are the founders, you are the bosses. But you treat your employees like you're all on the same level in many regards and that more the family culture. In fact, I think the way you described it was like an entrepreneurial co op.

It was one of the things that surprised me about your business in that most of us are told, you know, hire people if you're adhd, don't hire other people that are adhd, hire the most, not neurotypical people you can get your hands on. Or hire people that want to excel at their job, but they have no entrepreneurial leanings and that's not true for you. By hiring not for people who have specific skills or specific experience or specific credentials, you are hiring people for traits and for the way they are oriented to the world of work, whether they're working in their own business, someone else's business, freelancing, whatever those traits, traits that you've just named, the autonomy, mastery and ownership, those are entrepreneurial traits.

And in fact, you fully said we want to work with people who either have their own business, so they're working with you part time and they have their own business, they want to have their own business or they have had their own business. Most people would not give that advice. But the people who value those three things are entrepreneurial people and that works for you. Another thing you've done that surprising or surprised me anyway, is that most entrepreneurs with adhd, because of our rejection sensitivity, because of our imposter issues, because we have spent our entire life thinking there's something fucking wrong with us.

We are almost never the most expensive option in our niche. And yet you lead with, hey, you're meeting with a prospect, you're meeting with a lead, and you straight up cue off with, you know, we're probably going to be the most expensive quote you get. And you do it boldly, directly and without apology, most business owners would never do that. They would be like fucking shitting themselves thinking about it. How did you arrive at that and what do you think it signals to people who are just right for you?

G: It's something I'm so proud of now, like this far into it, because yeah, it's something that people struggle with so much and something, you know, wasn't always easy. That was definitely our coach helping us push that direction, but also just the reality of the business, like, I need to make this much money to pay my bills. I'm not making money hand over fist here, honestly right. Like it's not like this is a hugely profitable business to be in and I think really, it's like, a lot of it is what causes you the most pain, right?

Like, when you work with clients who don't value what you do because you don't value what you do, your life's gonna fucking suck. Like, they just oh, they just., they're not gonna get it. You're not gonna attract the right people. You're not gonna retain the right people and the attitude of that. The attitude of those clients, it goes right down to your employees. It's the same and then they're like, well, you know, telling your employee, I'm sorry, I know this doesn't make sense, and this is a terrible idea, but we eat sandwiches here and we smile while we do it is not a great pitch for anyone right now.

H: Did you just come up with that?

G: Yes.

H: Oh, my God dude, I'm literally. And we promised ourselves we were not going to go off on any tangents, and I feel really good that we've gotten two thirds of the way through this interview, and it only just now happened. So, like, you know, kudos but I'm just picturing your little employee cafeteria with a sign that says, we eat shit sandwiches here and we like

G: And we smile while we do it. No napkins, no wet wipes. Oh, please. Oh, God.

H: All right, reel it in, reel it in, reel it in.

G: But I mean, nothing and honestly, part of what, like, once you go down that road and you go to business conferences and you talk to other agency owners, being able to drop that in front of people and watching them, like, just be like, oh, my God. Like, that just solidifies it because you're like, okay, I'm so fucking badass. Like, no one can touch me and honestly, part of that is because we won't do something we don't believe in.

Like, we just can't right. That sense of fairness and justice and honesty, it's a real pain in the ass sometimes because most people are like, don't explain it to me. That, like, I don't need to know every detail of your thought process and why this is true, why this is 100% objectively true. And so a lot of the time when we spec something, like, we're going into the weeds, we're going to think it through to the nth degree, and that results in a bid that's going to be accurately priced. It's like no surprises.

H: No surprises. Yeah.

G: You will not be surprised in this, the person that you know bid half the price, it might wind up being as expensive as ours by the time you're done. They just didn't want to, you know, show it to you up front and after you get told enough time. Well, yeah, it was really priced, you guys are the most expensive bid. Like so eventually we were like, you know what, I'm going to tell you straight up, like this will be the most detailed bid you get and the most expensive bid you get. And if that's how you want to do this, then we'll be a great fit for each other.

And if not, then, you know, we can find something that is a lower scope that might fit your needs better and we can work on this iteratively. Like you don't have to commit to everything at once, but you do have to commit to doing things our way, which is. And I get it that is not in our vocabulary, starting out as neurodivergent people. Because everywhere else in our lives it is a neurotypical way. We don't get a say, we are an inconvenience right. And it takes a lot to get to that point. But you have to set your sights on that achievement and just take each step toward it. You don't get there in one day right. It's just, it's one step at a time.

H: Yeah. And it's a wonderful thing to aspire to. But we gotta be patient with ourselves and calibrate both our identity and our nervous system to operating at that level. Because if you have really big struggles with rejection sensitivity, you don't jump to that. If you have big struggles with people pleasing, if you have struggles with scope creep and boundaries and hearing no and pushback, this is not the move for you. This is a baller move that you have to work your way to.

But it is so in alignment with a commitment to excellence, no surprises, full transparency, and only working with people who truly value the best of the best. And if that's what you want, I so love that you talked about how you can do that incrementally. Because I think we need to ratchet up our nervous system, our boundaries and our ability to not go into the storytelling when we don't hear from people right away like you talked about earlier. Because man, we are world class storytellers.

You know something else I understand about folks like us entrepreneurs with ADHD is that we often have a really strong internal locus of control. Now that can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Sometimes it's like, I'm taking charge of this. Like you said earlier, I'm 11 years old, I want money, I need this and that, so I need to go out and make it. That's an internal locus of control. It can go too far in that we think we're responsible for every fucking thing, which is not true. So we tend to look inward rather than expecting other people to tell us what to do. It's very clear that that's been a driving force in your life all along.

G: Yeah, 1,000% and with Eric as well. And I think with the people we have on our team, I think it's like we’e're people that look for the truth within ourselves. And if we are not there yet, we'll just keep learning things until we feel like we're closer to it. It's really like having people that have their own ideas and are ready to question things and push back on things. And as a leader being yeah, I want to hear what you have to say. I may not be able to act on it right now, but I value what you have to say because it's a funny, I think, sort of paradox of our sense of control, our sense of how we engage the world comes very much from an internal validation rather than external. But that also, I think, makes us more aware of what we don't know or what we don't know we don't know, which can turn into imposter syndrome. But it also makes us open to that. I desperately want to know what you know, because what do you know that I don't know that I can integrate and assimilate and synthesize in myself.

H: I think it really comes down to having the self acceptance to recognize I have biases, I have beliefs and I have blind spots. And when I don't see any of that as a problem, when I don't see that as pathological, when I don't see that as evidence that I'm flawed or defective or inadequate or incompetent, when we realize everybody has all those things and if we're cool with that, we don't perceive it as a problem, we can be open, we can be honest, we can be curious, we can have integrity and say, that's not something I'm familiar with, I need to check in.

We don't need to inflate our you know, persona or ego. We don't need to promise more than we can deliver. And I think especially now when so many people, especially those who market their businesses online, they are representing something that really isn't them. And is it any wonder, because they've either been taught by some coach or guru that this is what makes people buy. Sooner or later, people do figure out who the fuck you actually are, so. And then they'll never do business with you again if you're not who you say you are.

I want to ask you another thing. You said something to me that's really, really stuck with me. And I think about it as, you know, having that self trust and really being able to follow your own intuition and your own instincts. You said, and I think I have to paraphrase it. You said we approach things with this belief. You already know everything you need to know, even if you don't have the language for it yet. I'm interpreting that as how much you trust your gut with people and decisions. And I would love it if you'd say some more about that.

G: Yeah, I think that's something that has come with age, is an experience, I think. Well, yeah, I mean right my internal pattern recognition is much more dialed in. But I think that we're born with all of these instincts and ability to read situations and people. We have all of these things hardwired into us. And so our ability to read situations and people and understand them before we understand them, I think is much stronger than we give it credit for. And I think that especially when you're hiring people, you're in a situation where you're interviewing someone, you're meeting them for the first time, and you have kind of two voices.

You have maybe the voice of your gut that is telling you something very clear almost immediately most of the time. And you have the voice of yeah but that's questioning yourself, being like yeah, but, you know, because you are aware of your biases, you're aware of those things, and you're questioning all those things. You're calling your own instincts into question. And, you know, one of the things that I've started to hammer into my own head lately is, but do the people that you surround yourself with regularly, was there ever that other voice telling you to doubt yourself when you met them, when you interact with them, or was it always, you know, to some degree, a sense of ease and safety and just kind of clicking?

And I think when you can get into that point of running a business, you do need to. You got to use your math. You gotta keep the math involved right? That's Eric's job. But my job is to hone that instinct and that internal compass as much as possible and just be the vibe check. And I mean, Eric has his own vibe check for sure, but mostly we keep him on the math because that is just where I'm not allowed to go at all. It would just be terrible.

H: Better for everyone concerned.

G: Yeah. So I think it was one of the things I learned in trauma therapy was just there's the unthought known where you know things your bot that live in your body, but, you know, they're in an older part of your brain. They haven't come up into the prefrontal cortex and into language centers where you have concepts you can consciously engage with. And it takes time and practice to tap into that and that's getting into the weeds a bit. But suffice to say, your instincts know better 99% of the time. And the other voice is conditioning and it's words and noise. It's just noise. It doesn't mean anything.

H: We can talk ourselves into and out of all kinds of things and have many, many regrettable stories to refer to. Along those lines, I think learning how to dial into our inner voice and learning how to dial into our intuition and instincts is. It involves more unlearning than learning, because most of us have been conditioned to not trust our instincts and to see that as a soft skill that in fact is inaccurate and doesn't even count and shouldn't be trusted. Nearly every successful entrepreneur I know with ADHD relies very heavily on their instinct and intuition, and they have trusted advisors like you do and like I do.

To be that second brain and that objective voice, I'm wondering, you know, it's only been six years since you found out that you had adhd, and the more you know about it, the less surprised you are that that's the case. I want you to apply this idea that you already know everything you need to know, but you don't have the language for it yet. Does that also apply to now knowing? Oh, yeah, I'm neurodivergent, I have adhd. Didn't you kind of always know, like, you always knew you were different and you needed to go about things differently, and now you have the language for it.

G: What having a diagnosis gives you is at least can give me or a person is just permission to accept it and not see things as like, oh, I need to be like everybody else. I think that's one of the main things is just the pressure to conform. And you go to a conference or you're online, you're on LinkedIn, and there's all this advice. Oh, do this, build these habits. You know, it takes this many things to build a new habit. And I'm like, guess what? That's not how my brain works. Sorry like, that advice will drive you insane. Because if you build the habit for me anyway, within 90 days, I will never do that again like, ever. Like, going to bed on time, gone. Going to the gym like, I've gone to the gym in a few runs. I've been super healthy. I've had a clean house for about three months max. And then my brain is like, it's so cool that we did that thing. That's amazing. We're never doing it again. It's boring now.

H: It's a project. Completed the project.

G: Yeah. It’s not a fun project. We love projects. We just love projects we haven't done already. And we already know every step of those ones and there is no dopamine to be mined. There are no more crevices. There are no more crumbs.

H: But truly, I think something I hear very often is with the diagnosis comes permission to just accept ourselves. And you wouldn't think it would be so important, but, man, you know, I've diagnosed hundreds of people with ADHD when I still had an active psychotherapy license, and I now feel there's really only three valid reasons to get a diagnosis, and they are very valid. Like, if you want to try medication, you need a fucking diagnosis. Do not buy that shit on the Internet or on the black market.

You will get in trouble. So if you need medication, you need a diagnosis. If you need accommodations in the workplace, you need a diagnosis. And if you need validation so that you can finally get off your own back about who and how you are being diagnosed will give you that. Other than that, it's information, right? And I think for you, it's confirmation. Okay, last question, most entrepreneurs that I talk to, solopreneurs in particular, they kind of understand the value of a team. They understand the benefits of hiring other people to either do the shit that they don't enjoy doing or they're not good at, or just to create more space for them to do other stuff.

They get the benefits of that but so many of them think, I do not want to manage people. Or they're afraid that they don't know how to set expectations. Like, they either expect too little of other people and then they get taken advantage of, or they expect too much, and then they're a tyrant boss and they burn people out. So I think we just feel like, I just want to be responsible for myself. I don't want to be responsible for other people. I don't want to traumatize people who work for me. And I don't want to keep having turnover because I can't seem to find anybody who I can work with.

If someone listening is at that stage now, they're like, I know I probably need a team, but I really don't. I don't know how to do this. I don't even know if it can be done, well, this guy seems to know. What would you tell them that might help them just develop a little more trust in their ability to hire the right people? Like, what would be the first mindset change or the first step they might take?

G: Find someone you vibe with, someone you get along with, someone that you kind of get each other, you click and, yeah, it's going to make it harder to fire them if you wind up in a situation where you can't afford them. But I think you're less likely to get to that point because you'll just feel more comfortable telling them things, instructing them, being candid with them. I think being really candid with people can help, but I know that's really hard if you want to take baby steps.

But I think the best way just to go back to, you know, listening to our gut is if you vibe with someone, you can talk about the same TV shows they have. A really wealthy done cover letter was something I used to always look for. I'm like, the resume is whatever like, I don't care, you'll figure it out or you won't. But, like, if you can write me a good cover letter that explains why you want to work here. Everything about you comes across in your writing, every single thing that I need to know is coming across there.

And, like, it will be better than you think it will be. It won't always be easy. It won't always be sunshine and rainbows. You're still running a business, it's still hard. But, in my mind, when I think about my team, I think about and when I'm like going through a hard time and I just need to crash out for a day, I just see myself lying in the ocean floating on my back and my team is the ocean that I'm lying in and I'm just floating there.

And they're just buoying me up because I know that they'll get things done that need to get done when they need to get done by. And if they really need me, they'll bug me. But by and large, you know, I think with the whole entrepreneurial co op concept that we talked about a bit there, it's really people that have had their own business or do have their own business or have experience contracting, they have experience managing themselves. They don't need that kind of babysitting and you don't want someone you have to babysit. I'm sorry, this is going to rule out a lot of people you're going to meet with that are used to being babysat, that are used to being told what to do all the time.

You want someone that you can be like, I need you to go do this, and they'll come to you with questions, they'll come to you when they have a problem, they'll come to you for enablement. And advice, because you've created a parallel relationship instead of like a hierarchical relationship. I think the more you lean into the hierarchies, the more you enable learned helplessness. And people are just like, well, everything above this is not my responsibility. Like just, just clean break. And when you operate more in parallel, then you, you're sharing, everybody's sharing a little bit of the responsibility, and it can just kind of move in between you.

So I understand the fear and the insecurity, and there's a lot of things that we struggle with that you have to overcome to get to the point where I am, and I've been through all kinds of issues with this, but just take that first step and trust your gut, trust the vibe. Everyone can make themselves sound impressive and knowledgeable and experienced, but if they're not someone that makes you feel safe and engaged in a way that the best people you know make you feel, then just take a pass on it. Just take a pass, no, thank you, I'm gonna move on.

And when you find that right, fit person like you will make each other's lives so much better. And then you'll know, okay, what do I look for next time? And you'll be looking for the same thing. And now you have someone who's in alignment with you that can help you with that decision. So just think about the people that make you feel good and safe and look for that feeling in the people that you hire.

H: You are never going to hear this from anyone who works in HR. You are never going to hear this from a neurotypical person. But as you've been sharing this Ian, seeing it makes me realize that I was doing this years ago and having to fight for it every step of the way. Because I hired for the personality, I hired for the person's traits. I hired for their mindset, I hired for just how they show up in the world. I was so much less concerned with what was on their resume, what they've done before, because like you, I wanted to surround myself with people who had the attitude. It used to be called the can do attitude. Now I think of it as the everything's figureoutable.

People who actually enjoy figuring things out and don't expect to have everything handed to them one bit at a time. People who enjoy challenging themselves, they don't want a babysitter, they don't need a babysitter. And only the idea that you should only hire someone who's already done the exact job that you're interviewing them for. Why would they be looking to change jobs if they've already mastered this? I'm interested in people who are continuously challenging themselves to acquire new mastery and that is exactly what you've done in your business. It is unconventional advice, but I think it is so, so incredibly helpful as a neurodivergent person building a company that you are not going to want to burn down or burn out from.

So really, really valuable stuff. Thank you so much for sharing all of this and for really being so intentional about what you're doing and for being such a good example of what can happen when you trust your gut. It's not like you're never gonna make a mistake, but mistakes don't hold you back from continuing to pursue what you know is going to work as soon as you find it. I love every bit of it.

G: My pleasure. It was wonderful. I had such a good time.