Ever get that feeling your brain is sprinting in a million directions while the rest of the world is taking a slow stroll? This episode is all about living and thriving with ADHD as an entrepreneur. Melody shares the vulnerable, messy reality behind her diagnosis and running a business with a “sparkly brain,” while Curt brings his undiagnosed-but-oh-so-familiar Ferrari brain energy and the worry, self-doubt, and relentless hacks that go with it. We get personal, philosophical, and practical about what ADHD means in a world built for Hondas and why that might not be a bad thing.

What We Talk About:

1. Why Melody feels like her ADHD diagnosis gave her “the handbook” for her brain (and why Curt resisted getting one)
2. The Ferrari vs. Honda Pilot analogy are ADHD brains just built for a different kind of track?
3. Stories about homework meltdowns, parenting kids with wildly different operating systems, and the heartbreak of letting go of school expectations
4. The hacks, tricks, and self-management systems that actually help, plus why those only work for the person who invented them
5. Curt’s visual “milestone” strategy for corralling racing thoughts in meetings
6. Melody explaining why her whole company is designed for ADHD entrepreneurs (and why work is her “healthy addiction”)
7. How shame and comparison warp the experience of ADHD and the real work of finding your strengths
8. What happens when faith, God, and fairness collide with neurodiversity (Curt gets philosophical!)

Key Takeaways:

1. ADHD isn’t just distractibility—it’s relentless energy and hyperfocus that can be superpowers if you learn to channel them (but the crash is real)
2. Diagnosis isn’t a crutch—it’s the start of self-compassion, better strategies, and actual confidence
3. The best hacks are unique—trying to model someone else’s perfect system usually ends in chaos (or shame)
4. Building a purpose-driven business is possible with ADHD, but you need systems, structure, and help—and it still won’t be linear
5. Parenting, business, and relationships are all harder—and richer—when you embrace the unpredictability instead of fighting it

Timestamps:

0:00 – Melody’s ADHD energy and the joy of new ideas

1:10 – Diagnosis journeys and how it shifts self-perception

6:00 – Ferrari brains vs. Honda brains: what does that mean for business and life?

16:00 – Hacks for keeping focus (but only if they fit your brain)

30:00 – ADHD tendencies and why entrepreneurship attracts them

39:00 – The faith question: why are we all so different, and what does that mean?

46:00 – Everyday coping strategies that actually stick

I love the excitement of a new thing. I love learning new things. As long as I'm interested in the thing that I want to learn, it has to be what I want to learn. Right? I love figuring things out. And, like, there's nothing like the energy that I get from exploring a new idea. And a new idea can be inside of my existing company. I have a new idea for a way to solve a problem. So when I'm at my best in the company that I have currently, I am the person who gets to work on short term, but bigger projects and create innovative solutions for those.

Welcome to the Sole Proprietor Podcast. I'm Curt Kempton.

And I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week, we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here. Curt, Today we're talking about adhd. There's no time.

Are you serious? I mean, I cut you off.

That was my thing.

I, I.

Just kidding. But I only do it because I'm so. Either excited about what you're saying and I want you to know that, or also, my brain moves too fast and I can't stop my words. But then I do after.

I just think it's funny. We've been so amped up to this topic because both of us, like, I've never been formally diagnosed with adhd. I just.

What?

No, they haven't. My son, who's just like me, has. But I didn't feel like I really needed a diagnosis. Either way, it plagues me, and I know it plagues a lot of entrepreneurs.

Well. And it plagued me for the first 30 years of my life. And I've talked about this on the podcast before. I cannot overemphasize that. Getting a diagnosis really shifted my view on myself, on my brain, on everything I knew about myself. I know that sounds crazy because you didn't feel the need to get it, but I did. I really lacked confidence. I had struggled in school.

I just never felt good enough because I knew I was smart. And everything in the world was telling me, nope, you're not smart because you aren't getting all the A's. You're not going to the best colleges like your friends. I just couldn't figure it out. But when I was 29, I was finishing college for the 30th time, but for real this time.

Oh, good. 30th time's the charm.

And I was also running my window cleaning company company full time, and I was also taking a full Course load. So four classes. And I was also raising my daughter as a single mom at the time. And I was also doing all the other things. And I went to my doctor and I was like, why am I such a failure? Why can't I do all of these things at once? Anybody could do it. He's like, you're insane. He didn't say these words to me because no doctor would. But he's like, melody, if you were somebody who just sat on the couch and wasn't going to do anything, I wouldn't tell you to do this.

Go get diagnosed with, with adhd. And he'd known me a long time. He saw how frustrated I had been. And it really, it wasn't like the test online where you take the quick quiz and they're like, yep, you've got it. It was a very serious two day, eight hour endeavor. But what it did is it taught me how to do better in college. It taught me where I concentrate best versus where I'm gonna fail. Like, classrooms are hard for me.

I am going to be noticing what everybody else in front of me was typing, which was not usually notes. It was like they were playing a game on their computer. I was just always just all over the place. Whereas if I did online classes, I was doing the class, you know. Anyway, that shifted everything. I actually brought my mom to the diagnosis because she's type A and she was the only one in our family who was not type addiction. And so imagine being somebody who's very type A, who was very good in school, who had all of these qualities, and then having your kids all be the opposite of you.

And that is a hard part of being a kid with it is that feeling like you're disappointing everyone. In fact, the reason I'm undiagnosed is actually that exact reason. I was sort of raised to believe that all these new diagnoses, it was ADD back when I was a kid. ADHD was the people who absolutely could not be controlled.

That was my brother.

Yeah, so. But in high school, my friends would always joke around like, I've got add, you know, and we were crazy and wild and we had a lot of fun. But I was raised to believe that people who got the diagnosis were just looking for an excuse for bad behavior and for being rotten kids and not being able to focus. Focus is hard for everybody. And I really did grow up thinking, of course you have a hard time focusing. Everyone has a hard time focusing. And so like, oh, I feel so, you know, constrained. And yeah, everyone else feels constrained too.

Just buck up and deal with it. And so I made it a long ways in life with the attitude that maybe you could be diagnosed add, but you don't need an excuse for bad behavior. You just need to learn how to harness it. And there's definitely some negative side effects of coming at it from that perspective. And it's how I raised my kids, because I believe even to the point of when I was having my own kids, I. But I have a son that made it absolutely impossible to ignore anymore. I'm assuming you went to a neuropsychologist.

I did, yeah.

And, you know, we sat there, he did the test, he got his diagnosis for add, adhd, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and dyslexia. So then they sit down and explain to you what it means. And the way it was explained to me, that I just found so enlightening for myself, you talked about strategies, helping that. Just this simple analogy really helped me. The neuropsychologist went down. He said, look, your son's IQ comes out quite high, but no one's really ever gonna unlock it. Because the problem is, is that he ranks, like, in the bottom 2% for these things. And I'm like, dang it, my kid's so broken, you know, But.

But I already knew. That's why I brought you here. That's why I paid all the money at the desk. And he did not go that route. He did not say my kid was broken. He said, your son is wired like a Ferrari, and most of the population is wired like a Honda. Maybe like Pilot, right? Suv. Put lots of people in it.

Go down dirt roads, put any old gas you want in it. Take it out on the weekend or don't. Take it out on rainy day or don't. It's not that great of a vehicle for racing. It's not that flashy of a vehicle. It's probably going to perform for a good 200,000 miles, and it'll do good work for you. But a Ferrari, you put special gas in, you take it to a special track, you let that thing rip. Forget about speed limit signs.

Do not let a regular mechanic touch a Ferrari. Do not put regular old headlights in a Ferrari. Like, these are carbon fiber special such and suches. And that just changed everything for me. And as soon as I got into that paradigm, it allowed me to see it for what it really was.

I've had experiences, so I am medicated right now. I've been medicated on and off for years. I have found it very Very difficult for me to run a company unmedicated. But I also dream about a day when my company can run and I don't have to be medicated. I think that I'll just tell a story that my husband does not have ADD at all, not one bit. And one time when our son was a baby, Matt was in engineering school. I was running my company and doing all the things, and we were eggs exhausted, as you know, one is when they have a baby. And so Matt had to study all night for one of his engineering tests.

And I said, matt, listen, guys, I'm not a drug dealer, but this was a desperate time. Said Matt, take half of this pill only. It'll just help you to stay up, but take only half. He did not listen, but that's besides the point. So he took my pill, and I was advocating a quarter of a dose. He took half my dose. He became a superhero. His brain was, like, insane.

It was moving, moving, moving. He couldn't stop talking. He was like, let's go. Let's do this. And that man should never, ever take any drugs again. And he hasn't. But.

Are you kidding me? You could convert this guy into the dream machine.

What it does is his brain operates like. I'm just trying to get my brain up to what Matt does on a daily basis, just with normal chemistry, with his chemistry. That's what I try to do with medication, with my hacks that I do. I'm just trying to get to a place where I can be not normal, but, like, where I can not have to deal with all of the frustrating parts of this.

Yeah, I think that that is an interesting point. As we've learned with medicating my son off and on as. As well through the years, I think that it's been good for him to take some breaks. But it is interesting to find that a stimulant for me is not a stimulant for him.

Yeah, a stimulant for me is. It doesn't do what it would do for somebody else. And I think that really helps me also. So, like, first of all, girls did not get diagnosed when we were growing up. That just didn't happen. We showed none of the signs. My brother was one of those unmanageable kids. He was diagnosed News 8.

But they never looked at me. There's nothing from me. They knew I had a learning disability because I was having to always get extra support. But I was also really smart. So it was like I was dumb and also smart. I was dumb for school because School wasn't made for a dyslexic or an ADHD brain. It was made for a brain that is good for school. Right.

So I'm really letting my ADHD fly. By the way, you're doing a great job. Because I want people to understand that this is what a sparkly brain is like. If they didn't. No. But the point is, it really, when I was diagnosed, changed everything about the way I saw myself. I started studying. I read every book that I could.

And when I say read, I meant skim. Skimmed every book that I could and tried to just download and understand everything I could. And then there reached a point where I tried to make everything perfect. Perfect systems. I was going to develop every perfect system around now that I had this superpower of understanding my brain. And I realized, I will never follow a system. And then I got depressed because I realized, oh, this is my brain. But that's the cycle I think I've seen friends go through.

Now I accept my brain. I'm not as hard on myself at all. I understand what's going on. And if there's a time when I don't want to take meds, I don't take meds. I'll go for a week without it if I'm on vacation and just give myself that break. But I also really am clear on my strengths. Sometimes I've leaned too far into the, like, these are my areas of weakness. So I'm not even going to get better on it.

I talk about that sometimes. But I do have to get better. I have to become a better listener and not a better talker. One more thing. When I'm on my firefly notes, you know how it says how much you're talking versus how much somebody else is talking? I'm always at 70%.

Really?

Oh, yeah. That's like something I'm very hyper aware of, but it's because I get excited. And also when you're talking to people who are more like listeners anyway, what do you have to say?

You've already said some really cool and insightful things. Operating off of the undiagnosed side. There's the pre learning about my son, and then there's the post learning about my son. That has changed some things for me. I've certainly had to figure out some strategies over the years that have made it possible for me. I mean, my nickname in high school is Crack Baby Kempton. What? Yeah. I mean, I'm not proud of it.

I am. I think that's a great nickname. Can we name the episode Crack Baby Kempton.

I'd prefer you didn't.

Okay.

The fact is, is that, you know, you talk about getting excited. I've spent a lot of years trying to just use full on willpower and strategy to mold. And they say you put a bridle on a horse, it's just a little bit you put in their mouth. You attach this bridle to it and just this little thing can control this big old horse. And I've tried to bridle my passion in that way. And so during school, there's just a point where I just would buckle down, just try to use my focus. I would try to get my focus to go in on my studies. And I was able to successfully do that until about halfway through my junior year and I just couldn't anymore.

There's no way. And I think that's one reason I probably went undiagnosed is because I was a good student and I could channel my energy. But then I just lost it. Then I put all my attention on the girls I wanted to go on dates with and the football game I wanted to go beat putts and pans at, and the cross country and the soccer I was in and track. And I just kept putting this add energy into all sorts of different channels and it was good. But then I went on a mission for my church and I would have to constantly come up with strategies because you have to study three hours a day, every morning you are in the Bible or any other scriptures, you are studying those just incessantly. And it would be like three sentences where, yeah, oh, come back, come back. Okay, yeah, one more sentence, one more word.

And so I came up with different strategies to help me. But when I got home, I got married and I started a business. That's when it started costing me a lot of money. A lot of money. So when I was going to college, I was working full time. We had a couple brand new babies as I was going early part of our marriage. And I worked full time at a bike shop and I was racing full time.

You just said three full time jobs. Four maybe. Just like me.

Yeah. But the thing is, I had all the energy in the world and I was strong. I was riding 80 miles a day. I would just leave my truck parked at home for Rachel to have it with the kids. And then I would get on my bike, I would ride to asu, go to school, get done to school, go ride to the bike shop, do the bike shop thing, work there, earn my paycheck, get done with that Go back to study hall, and then I would go back to my house. And that was about 80 miles round trip every day on a bicycle. And I had all the energy, and I was racing, and I was so fast. I mean, today I just laugh.

So now you start moving down that burnout road. And it was when I graduated from college, and my attention needed to really focus on one thing that I couldn't just perform really well at school on a thing and then just be done. Like, hurry and just do the absolute minimum, bang that thing out and be done. It was just constantly working on it. So now I'm figuring out how to not leave tools on a job site, how to make sure that the oil in the van gets replaced before we blow the engine out.

By the way, I have to tell you, when you were talking about college and how you'd go off on your. When you'd read a sentence or two, do you know the first time I ever read a full paragraph and then a whole chapter was when I had medication for the first time?

Really?

I had never been able to read a chapter, just a paragraph. And I was focused, but it was hyper focused because it was new, but it was like, this is what people do.

Yeah.

I had no idea. My version of reading had always been skimming and trying.

The point I wanted to make is that I had to start teaching myself to first put obstacles in my path that would remind me to get back on track. Then I learned a new strategy. Kind of like what I did right here where we diverted and I came back. As soon as I feel myself divert, I leave myself a mental milestone. So I actually, in my mind, was talking about the life of trying to get ADD as a business owner. And when we diverted and you coughed, the first thing I had to do is, like, set a milestone in my head, and I can physically see it, like, in a road where I go, okay, that's the part of my life that we're putting the milestone in so I can come back. Or the subject. I'll do it.

A lot of times in business, like, we'll be in a meeting and something will diverge. And I just have this, like, this habit now of no matter how far off we go, if I feel like we're going off, I'll put a milestone so that if we need to come back, we can, like, finish it.

Curt, you're good at that, too, because every episode you do that. And I'm like, how does he do that? Now I know it's mental.

I actually can see the picture It's.

A, it has to be visual.

Yeah. So it's a, like I'll see the thing. So it doesn't have to be like a concrete thing. I can just make it like a part of life or a feeling. I just put the milestone down there and it's a concrete, like it's a.

Four sided, like stone post.

Yeah, stone post. And I just put that right there and then I can just see it.

I'm going to try that.

So yeah, that's how I do it. And the fact is is that as we deal with my son and try to figure it out, my strategies don't work for him. And so strategies are great when you discover them and they work for you. But it's weird. My son, I would say almost everything works for a day or less. So like sitting at a desk writing with pencil, having an eraser, I can't do that. And he did it for a day and it was like, oh my gosh, we found the thing and then like it doesn't work the next day or it doesn't even work later on that day. But yeah, there's a couple things that we have found that help for him.

And one of those things is a counselor to sort of help him like to unpack strategies. Because every time I try to give him strategies, we're not the same. And it's just condescension like, oh, so that works for you? Not for me, I'm stupid. So that was not helpful. Another thing that we've done with him that was pretty helpful is something called tms. It's a machine to help rewire the brain. And basically what it does is it helps break up some of the connections so you can meet with a TMS doctor. And what they do is they read your brain as they're you're talking to about certain aspects and they can see where there's like dysfunction.

And then what they can do is they can shoot magnetic rays and they do like 10 minute long sessions that have 50 minute breaks. And so he'll go there and like maybe do a school and every 50 minutes he has to go and get a 10 minute thing. Just picks a certain amount of the brain to like sort of break up some of those neurons and allow them to remesh. And so we've been able to target a couple areas.

This sounds like neurofeedback in a way.

I only know of it known as tms. So they've targeted parts of his brain that would go after like reading and they've targeted Self control, that's another one that he really struggles with. And it's not perfect. It's not. But I'll tell you, when we targeted the part, there was a time when he felt so isolated from the whole rest of the world. Like he just felt like there's no way that he could ever assimilate into this world. And I watched him like sort of slip into a depression that was just deep and dark and it was really hard to watch. So what happened was they targeted the depression area of his brain and that actually was almost immediate, a bunch of treatments.

And then he basically was able to like sort of rewire that part of his brain and sort of feel better about himself. Not because he was thinking higher things of himself, but because he was able to rewire those connections that he had formed that were, you know, false connections really.

So neurofeedback is somewhat similar, except you have to train your own brain. This is older stuff. We've done it within our family. You go to a therapist and they hook your brain up to a game. It's like an old Pac man game, essentially. And you have to control the game with your mind, essentially. And what they do is they will speed it up sometimes. My daughter had very severe PTSD after she was in a drive by shooting.

Yeah. Just offhanded.

Yeah. This like just normal thing.

No big deal. And so this was like an emergency of after trying many things and it really started to help and then we couldn't complete it with that thing we had happen in 2020 called Covid.

Oh, Covid. Yeah.

But they would try to stress her out, like testing that stress by making the game go faster. And then she would have to try to like slow it down. It was fascinating. Did it work? Yeah. The technology looks so old school, it's ridiculous. But I live in an area where there are many therapists who are very specialized and, you know, I'm very lucky actually to be in this kind of area. And it does help. And I've tried emdr.

I love trying everything.

You said the technology is old school. First thing I thought of is Princess Bride. That's how it is when Wesley's laying on the. On the thing. They like leather straps around your head.

It's not that bad.

Like mount you to a table and turn a water wheel on.

It wasn't quite like that. But there are treatments. There's a lot. There's drugs. There's what you just said.

And honestly, it's been nice because even had him on any medications for a while. But I'll tell you. And I think that anyone listening who is an entrepreneur kind of already gets that fire that comes with it. But my son is very, very good at absorbing information as it relates to animals. When he took the IQ test, they're like, okay, I just need you to list as many animals as you can in the next 60 seconds. And he proceeded to give like over a hundred animals. Like, the chart was broken. Like, we can go up to 45.

And the fact is he goes hard on it. And if you want to know how to breed those animals or what the lifespan of those animals are, you know everything about them. This is crazy. The kid hates reading anything. But if you want to know the Latin name of any millipede or black widow or whatever, he could just tell you, just, boom, offhanded. So going back to that Ferrari reference, yeah, dirt roads aren't really his thing and you probably aren't going to find him being the family get around car van for eight people passengers. But my gosh, put that kid on a track and see what happens. He's a senior in high school where we moved into homeschooling because he just wasn't able to get the help he needed in a regular school.

And we just had the conversation this weekend where looks like he's just going to drop out, just not going to finish. And we've done the whole forcing a square peg into a round hole thing as long as we possibly could. But it's really come down to the part where it's like, do we just trust that this focus is going to get him where it needs to be? They say, don't ever let schooling get in the way of your education. At some point, we need the relationship in our family to stay. And what happens is a really strict parent raises a really good liar. And we just basically were forcing him. I'm not going to say incapable, I don't think that would be the right word. But the amount of effort required to do the simple things that we were asking him to do that we viewed as simple was just inordinately more than he was willing to.

And he saw no point. That's another part about adhd.

Oh, yeah, you have to see the point.

If you don't see the point, which he's like, what am I going to do with this piece of paper? Who am I going to take it to? You think I'm going to go work for somebody? They're going to ask me to read an employee manual? Like, I'm not reading anything. So he's going to be self employed or he's going to be a laborer. He's going to go to, like, he's talking about maybe doing plumbing apprenticeship.

Well, can I just say that my dad never graduated from high school. He dropped out when he was in ninth grade, I think. And he probably read. He says he read maybe one book throughout his life, and he has all of the things, too. Where do you think I got all of this? And my son. And like, it's very hereditary, but my dad went on to get his bachelor's degree and his master's degree. He worked for ups. He was an entrepreneur.

He learned to harness. Like, when he wanted to do the thing, he did the thing because he needed that in order to get the other thing that he wanted. So when it became something that mattered to him and he saw the reason for it, then he did it. I think a lot of people with ADHD or different styles of learning, like, we have that same thing, and yet society has told us that we need to have this piece of paper. And I think if my kids said they were going to drop out, I would struggle with it because it feels like a basic need. But guess what? A gh. What is it called? A ghd.

G, E, D. Yeah.

But getting it, it's not the same like it used to be. Remember when we were young, if you dropped out and you got a ged, it felt very different than I think it feels now. And especially with the backlash against higher education that it's almost like right now it's a good time to not want to finish school. And he probably will do something later, you know, when he decides, I must.

Say, he's gonna succeed. Like, I just know it. Like you said, it's really hard to see someone put that much time and energy into something and then just set it on fire of not completing it. And I know his mom, which, by the way, Rachel's a nurse and she needed education and she would tell you she's not that great of a student, but she did graduate from nursing school at, like, the very top of the class. Like, she was like a student. Like, it was impossible the grade she was getting. So, yeah, I think that I've supported Rachel, and I would have let him probably stop a long time ago, but, you know, you got to figure out, I got to support my son, I got to support my wife, my wife wins. And we did that.

But I think that it's just come to a point now where it's like, we're just gonna have to have Some faith here. And, I mean, I like that you're saying that. There's never been a better time maybe, to not do school. I still have worries. I have a lot of worries, of.

Course, but he has all the options available when he wants to, you know? And the thing is, like, I also think of my son. He does not like school at all, but he loves, like, his woodworking class. He's found he's doing, like, a whole seminar on woodworking at his school. We're lucky he has other things there that he's interested in. He loves football. He loves the sports, but he does. He would be a dropout, that kind of person. What I have done to make sure that we don't have the fight, and this is easy for me, but I just don't care about homework.

I feel like you used a lot of brain energy at school for somebody who's dyslexic and adhd. I'm not going to fight with him about homework. And his grades are pretty good and he gets help at school. So I'm not the kind of parent, because I did that with my daughter. We had so many fights. And finally the therapist was like, what if she just did it and got good grades and you guys didn't fight with her every day and let's just see what she can do? And I was like, that seems risky, but okay. And then she was fine. So I feel like he'll be okay if I don't bug him about that.

And we don't fight about it. It just the strain that comes when you. It just is too much. And that book I read that said you have 2,000 hours, days with your kids during adolescence, and those are gonna really create the relationship for the next 30 years of your adult life with them. So how you act with them right now is so important. So it's so complicated.

I don't want to turn this whole podcast into this whole thing with Justin, but I'll say this is that we had a long talk, like, sort of agreeing to it. And we have a family logo. We have a family motto. We have, like, the logo has a bunch of meaning in it. And one of the things in the logo is these four mountaintops that represent our four kids. And we just want to make sure you're walking towards your mountaintop. No camping, no just relaxing all the time and just staring. And no walking away from your mountaintop.

If you want to walk toward another mountain, that's fine. We can change our minds. But, like, go somewhere. Don't drift and that's going to be the hard part now is like, okay, fine, we're not pushing you to schoolwork anymore, but, like, you're going to turn 18 and you're not going to live here forever. In fact, the moment I see that you're not walking towards a mountaintop, you're going to figure out how much this world likes coasters. And it was easy to say. It'll be hard to enforce. But the fact is, is, like, that's sort of the precedent that we set so that he would know, like, okay, cool, you're not going to be distracted with school anymore now you're going to go all in on what? And so we're going to give him some time.

We're going to give him till the end of the year to figure out what he's working at Home Depot now. And from there, like, are you going to go apprentice plumber? Because he knows several plumbers. He knows a guy who owns an auto shop. Is he going to go apprentice for him? Is he going to start getting an LLC and selling these animals that he's breeding like crazy? I don't particularly care which one he chooses, and I also don't care if he changes his mind. What I do care about is if he's not actively all in.

Yeah, I totally feel the same way. I've had to, though, let go of that with my daughter, for instance, because her path, you know, her dad died the day she started college and when she was 18. That's a detour right there, that drive by shooting the next year when she was about to start college again. So she never went. And I'm so grateful she didn't go. She was the kind who would have partied through school. She didn't know what she wanted to do, and she doesn't have that debt. But I had to kind of let go.

Like, I have to have faith that the values that we have tried to instill in our children are there, but they have to do their own journey. And I look at my journey. I had, like, a kid when I was 21, and I just moved to Morocco when I was, you know, 19. Like, I did all these weird things that my parents freaked out about constantly, because that is not a path. Right? You go to college, then you get a good job in a corporation, and then you have your family, and then you live happily ever after. That's what we were taught. So, I don't know. It's kind of exciting as you're watching your kids figure things out sometimes.

I want it to go faster. Like get to the part where I don't have to worry anymore. But at the same time it's scary.

My mom says that that doesn't stop. So you can't hurry and get to that part.

She still worries about you.

Yeah.

You're so unreal.

Well, here's the deal. We've been talking a lot about just sort of the broad net of adhd. We've also encapsulated other sorts of neurodivergent ways of learning and all of that. And I think that under the basis that we're talking about Ferraris versus Honda pilots, let's talk about entrepreneurship with adhd. Because in fact, I was doing a little research here. There's data that says that some data suggests up to 60% of entrepreneurs show significant ADHD traits, even if undiagnosed. And that came from a Harvard and University of Virginia study. I believe that that also says that entrepreneurs with ADHD are more likely to start multiple businesses and pursue the most innovative of ideas.

Okay, 60% diagnosed and undiagnosed. But the traits, that is unignorable, right?

Well, you need those traits. You have to do everything. You have to be.

So what are those traits?

Well, I call it the sparkly brain. So I love the excitement of a new thing. I love learning new things. As long as I'm interested in the thing that I want to learn, it has to be what I want to learn, right? I love figuring things out. And like there's nothing like the energy that I get from exploring a new idea. And a new idea can be inside of my existing company. I have a new idea for a way to solve a problem. So when I'm at my best in the company that I have currently, I am the person who gets to work on short term but bigger projects and create innovative solutions for those.

And by the way, my whole company is built for people who have adhd, because every system that I developed was based on my deficits. And it doesn't mean like, but it works for entrepreneurs whether they have it or not. But I didn't want people to slide by if they were adhd, because we have tendencies that can really get in the way of our progress.

And that's just it. Is it the tendency for a car like a Ferrari to be really low to the ground? Like you put that thing on a road with potholes, the tendencies, the setting up, the failure. And so that fast moving, energetic visionary figure out iveness, all of that stuff, it's just gonna lead people to entrepreneurism.

Yeah. Or it leads to trouble a lot of times too. But I mean, that's true. There's a lot of people who have ADHD struggle with addiction. Like, work is my addiction. I've talked about it. But it's true. I have to be very careful about that.

And I don't know if you've read ADHD 2.0. He's the one who first wrote the big book, Back, Way back about it. But he talks about things that I had never heard before talked about. And this isn't new, but like, addiction is a big problem if you don't find a healthy path towards something that you're passionate about. And it's not just about that, but I think we can struggle in regular jobs unemployable. Like.

So ADHD is so interesting because I think it stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Yeah. And they. I don't know why they call it that for everybody now.

Well, because they didn't understand it when they named it. That's why they named it something that actually is kind of the opposite of what it actually is. Adhd. You can't have my attention. The deficit you're experiencing is my hyper focused attention. Like, it's almost as if to say that the name of the disorder, if you're going to call it, which I'm actually framing it right now, is not a disorder, but a superpower. It's like if your superpower is that you have an amazing grip and everything you grab just keeps crushing in your hands, everyone's like, wow, you have a disorder. Well, no, watch this.

You know, and then you do something that requires that strength. So one of the things that is interesting is, is that that attention deficit is. It's not like they'd be sitting there bored all the time. They don't have. Like, nothing can have my attention. I just sit in my. No. The fact that their brain is going a billion miles an hour and you have to amp them up on caffeine or Ritalin or Adderall in order to make it work backwards, that's a pretty good indicator that we actually are dealing with a totally opposite of what people might say it is, which leads to addiction, which leads that hyper focus on things that superpower can work against you for.

And that's sort of the trick that I was kind of saying is I found out my strategies that work for me. It's the idea of saying I hyperfocus on everything. I said this before on the podcast. If I was to start drinking alcohol, I already know I'M an alcoholic.

Same.

I love fixating.

Yes. If I remembered alcohol existed. I did have a drink on Dan Platis podcast the other day and. Cause I was like, it's night. I don't know how long I'll be up. We did three and a half hours. Three and a half hours.

Go hard.

I think I won the award. But I woke up this morning remembering why I don't drink alcohol. But you know, one of the things that I came up with an analogy that really helps to understand. Like, I don't want to say a normal brain because it makes it sound. I feel like I trigger them when I'm like, you're normal, average brain, you know, but that's only because I have a chip on my shoulder from all the years I felt, you know, average people move linear. Their brains are on a line. This is just an analogy. My brain is 360 degrees and then shooting in all directions.

So it's like there's a spark and I'm thinking of everything all at once. My husband, he's thinking of maybe one or two or three things not all at once. And he's kind of going in a direction that's more linear. When I have a problem to solve, I can solve it so fast with 50 solutions, which is not helpful. But I don't do anything linear. It's very much like a blast. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's very visual for me. And I think in business, I'll say the reason why I created one of the reasons for home service VA is because I needed what I call the melody manager.

And that's one of my techniques. One of my tactics is that I have a person who helps me manage me and my things because I lack some of the I'm weaker and some of the executive functioning skills that are like that we're supposed to have. And I need somebody who has those skills to kind of fill my void. And it helps me to be most myself when I can trust that there's a person who's got my stuff, who's handling the organizational aspect of it. Now I can be hyper organized, but hyper focus, hyper focus. I will make everything, but it has to be perfect. But that only is sustainable for a minute and then it's back to like my normal ways. It drives me insane.

Well, that's actually another big problem that people in entrepreneurship need to understand is part of the superpower is a really bad thing. And that is that you'll hyper focus on something to the exclusion of other things you should be doing. And then when you're done with it, you go hyper focus on something else and that thing falls apart. So you basically spend your whole life building a bunch of stuff that you forget you ever built. It doesn't ever get to live to its full potential and you end up basically going from building towers to letting them burn down in ashes. And you just spend your whole life going around building these different towers.

You're not careful. Yeah.

And again, you could put a system in place that maybe helps your behavior. You can put a melody manager in place or someone to help keep you from burning everything down or building stuff that doesn't matter.

The reason why I say that I just. That's a hack to. I want to change, I want to become better. That takes years, that can take decades. Right. A quick fix is meanwhile, while I'm trying to become better, let's put this person who's going to help me manage that. I can live a less stressed life and be more of who I am authentically. Because when you add all of the crazy stress of my million things and then, you know, the overwhelm that comes with that, it's exhausting.

It takes away my. The thing that makes me special. Like I can go and make videos about things that are going to be inspiring to my team or to other people or help train somebody. But I can't do that if I don't have my person helping me by putting the scripts that I'm going to use into the big view so that I can actually complete the project. Because I won't do. If it's a five step thing, I might get to step three and stop. If somebody helps me get there. It's going to get done.

Yeah. You have to have some sort of.

It's tricks.

It is, it's hacks, it's tricks. But you just have to solve for it. And I think that's the part that makes it so that us unemployable people can be the most successful leaders in the world is by understanding that, yes, I'm less risk averse. Yes, I can go harder and deeper on a specific thing than anyone else can. Yes, I have the ability to have more energy and a passion, maybe resilience, maybe innovation than other people. Those are all things that are gonna make you a great entrepreneur. If you don't recognize the kryptonite side of it, you'll never get to reach your full potential.

That takes a lot of self reflection.

Yes. And I think that's what's beautiful. About this. So, okay, this is where I really started breaking down my belief in God. This is where things really started to get frustrating for me, is that my core belief is that there is a God and he sent us to Earth to exercise our agency, our ability to choose. Obviously, as we have kids, we start understanding how difficult that is as a parent. Like, choose everything for them and make sure they don't ever make a mistake.

And.

And we also know how effective that that really is in the long run. The point is, is that this God that I believe wanted me to have the ability to choose. He was sending people to Earth with all different kinds of predispositions that, that are widely varied. So maybe you're attracted to someone of the same sex as you. Maybe you are adhd, maybe you're dyslexic, maybe you're a serial cheater on your spouse. Maybe you're a kleptomaniac, maybe you're a pedophile. Maybe it's not even mental. What if we're talking about cerebral palsy, which I know there's mental to it, but, like, there's physical ailment, Maybe you're autistic.

And my point is, is that if God is truly wanting to see what we'll do when we have the ability to make decisions, why are you limiting us in so many different varieties? There's no constant. Science means that we must have a constant. I can't be testing things with multiple variables yet. Like a snowflake. Everybody is different in every regard. Like, everyone has their own specific fingerprint of emotional intelligence, of mental abilities, physical ability. Like all these things. God's not got like one variable.

If I'm going to continue believing in this God, I need to understand what is the point of sending an ADHD person to Earth to work out their salvation and then sending someone with down syndrome to work out their salvation. And then you got your people who are, you know, what's called. You said we don't call them normal, whatever the normies is, because actually everyone is different. We can look at certain aspects of our life and go, I am deficient in this way. That's not fair.

God, our society set it up that way, though. It's not like we weren't normal and everybody else was normal. I think some people were easier fit into that.

Well, if we open up the view to not just like adhd, like, you're not gonna survive in a tribe that doesn't care about you. If you have cerebral palsy, you're dead. And God's not gonna get any meaningful data from your life. Like, you're just gonna show up, exist for however long, you know, your mother keeps you alive, and then you're just gonna die. And I know that I'm using something extreme, but, like, you know, even with, like, autism, they would just send them off to homes. Like, back in the day, if you had a severe case of autism, you're gonna go live in a home. And if you were a homosexual, they would just kill you. I'm only saying all this because I go, God, like, why wouldn't you just give us all a fair shake? And I know all the Sunday school answers, by the way.

I mean, I've been to enough Sunday school classes. I know that, you know, we're all given our special challenges to understand. Like, but that's all well and good, but does that mean that I have to live a life of suffering? Because I grew up in the medieval times when they didn't understand if you could float, you're a witch or something, you know, like. And then I had to turn some corners. And I think where I've gotten a little healthier around my belief in the eternities is that that entire difference of everybody and sort of learning who the best version of you is under those particular circumstances, I've had to sort of get my belief to understand that this isn't even about God. God isn't testing us for an answer to come through. At least this is my belief. He's not like, did you take the test and get an A? He's like, did you take the test and tell me what you are? What make brings you joy? What makes you feel strong? What makes you feel weak? What were you able to do to push against the weakness? And was it effective? And did you learn a strategy that made your life better? And in the case of adhd, I think we could argue this for every other shortcoming.

Did you take the thing that was deficient and learn how to, like, judo? Right. Turn that into something that was super positive? Because that is the God that I can get. That's when I was able to start reeling my faith back in, when I was able to say, he's not a sadist, because that's how it felt, is to put us on this earth and know darn good and well that basically every person is just here to suffer knowing that that was the case. Like, that doesn't sound like a loving dude at all.

Yeah, well, I like that you have come to that realization. So I haven't gone through that yet and gotten to the other side of it. But I do think about this. I also want to make a point for the easily triggered that when Curt is saying deficiencies, these are not actual deficiencies. It's just in the realm of this world that we live in, we've just been taught that certain things are acceptable and certain things are not. And the funny thing is, though, I think everybody feels like they are not enough of whatever it is that we've decided we should be.

What a great point. And I'm glad you put a finer point on that, because I'm thinking about my son right now. We've talked so much about him, and hopefully this isn't going to be triggering to him or anybody else is that, you know, he is so good at so many things, and one of the reasons he just can't stand being in school and it's hard for him to make friends is because he's put this image in his mind of, like, I am deficient. Like, if a teacher called on me and I had to read, I am not equal to these kids, and they will never be able to see me as one of their equals. Even though he could tell them stuff that they could only dream of knowing. And he's got it all memorized, right? So I tell my employees this. We're all a Pokemon card, right? And I've never actually played Pokemon, but I think I saw that, like, you can be powered up in some areas and lower another. And.

And there's not really such thing as someone who has all their powers all the way up on everything. And I think when I'm referring to deficiencies, what I mean is, is that, you know, they say comparison is the thief of joy. When you compare yourself to other people and you see that you don't measure up in a specific way, the first go to is, well, I can't have a chance of success because someone else is so much greater at this than me. And therefore, that's where that word deficient, I think comes from.

Yeah, I definitely go through ebbs and flows of struggling with all of the stuff that we're talking about, because I like to think about these things. I like to think like, is this a gift? I mean, it's very fashionable for it to be a gift right now or a superpower or a strength. And it's almost like the backlash of all of us, people who have grown up thinking that we were deficient in some way, being like, yeah, we're superheroes now. We were mate, you know? But I guess what I would say is once you have identified that you have these tendencies, as we will call them, these ADHD tendencies. Like once you figured out Curt, like, oh, maybe I've got this thing going on. Like there's a time where you start to learn to live with it and you start to make your hacks to make sure that you can live a life that feels somewhat controlled. I don't want to put people around me in the situations of bringing the chaos of the sparkliness that that like can explode into glitter everywhere. Not everybody wants glitter all over them, you know.

And so what are some of the things that you do that really help you on a day to day basis or to just either keep yourself on track and you've had a lot of years now of learning to put things into place. Like what are your go tos?

Well, the first thing, I only have a few channels that I can communicate on. So I use Voxer text messaging. I don't actually use the phone, I use Zoom and I use my calendar, email. So no messenger, no WhatsApp. Like I said phone, I just don't do phone. So I cut out a bunch of channels. So that's the first thing. If I'm going to have communications going, I know I can go find it in less places than all the places.

The second thing is, is that I'm only informed on what to do next. Like only three places. It's either in my notebook, my to do list or my calendar. I also do Inbox zero. So Inbox works as a to do list, but it's not my notebook. So it is a fourth place. Those are the only places that I keep my what's next? Because otherwise I will spiral because if I have too many places to go and I don't know what to do. So over time I've had to learn and I have kind of a prioritization tool that I use.

So if I know like this is important and urgent, it's got to get done, it goes right into my calendar for today. And I don't end my day till it's done. And when I'm done with the day and I plan for the next day, I determine can I push this till tomorrow reasonably or does it have to be done today? That's really hard when I'm traveling because I also really thrive in a repeated environment. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. I usually eat the same thing for lunch every day. If it wasn't for Rachel, I wouldn't have different meals at dinner. So I'm Regimented. I sit at my desk, I get the same time every day.

I do a mountain bike ride the same time every day.

You have a different kind of ADD than I do.

Well, it's the hacks. Like this is something that I've beat myself into submission to do. And I'll add these strategies don't work for my son. Also doesn't have the same ADHD that I do. But this was rooted in, and I'll say it one more time, this was rooted in me believing before, like when I had to figure it out. ADHD is just an excuse to be bad and misbehave. So I don't know that these came from a healthy place. They may have limited me significantly in the variety that like maybe I naturally would want.

But I will tell you that the coping that comes with it I've been very thankful for.

I am regimented in some ways, but I fight that. And so the energy it takes. So I have an ideal schedule. I really try to keep to it because I give myself a lot of space in that schedule to do like deep thinking work or creative work. Just mostly space. If I know that there's space, then you can make me do other things. You can make me go to meetings and other things. But I don't have the ability to wake up every day or I haven't been able to ever successfully be like, I'm going to do this every day for the rest of my life.

Amen. That seems is like a stranglehold just thinking about it. But I have a master list and if it's urgent and important, it's a number one on the list I've written out. I teach everybody the system. We all use it, our clients use it. On a scale of one is you have to get it done today, two is like the next 48 hours, et cetera. Everything for ADHD person is a one. So I get all the ones down and I'm like, this isn't possible to do today.

Then we start filtering again. Then we filter again until we have enough where we actually have the things we can possibly get done. And when I have an assistant, they're not allowed to give me a full list of things like trick me into thinking I only have like one or two things to do today and then give me the next one or two after that. When I travel, I never take my toiletries out of my travel bag. I never do because packing is really hard for me and it takes hours sometimes because I overthink it. I have friends who do the Same thing. I have, like, four of the same dress that I bring for traveling now. I have, like a capsule wardrobe, essentially.

I've been successful at it. Sometimes if it gets mixed in the wash, then it goes away. But when I travel a lot, I have to just have the same things because it takes away a stressor. So I'm always trying to find a system to take away the stress. Or, you know, I leave my keys in the car. How else am I going to find my keys?

Those are some pretty good strategies. And I know that your whole business, you touched on it before, but your whole business is really designed for people like you who are trying to run a business that can shave time off of the hacks.

And it's also like, we need people around us to help us, but oftentimes in the beginning, we are sabotaging that. And so I've learned the hard way a million times, just as you have, like, how to delegate better to people. Like, I'm always trying to figure out, how can I do this better? Having, like, quarterly, like, planning meetings or annual planning meetings, and then having somebody in place who is actually keeping the cadence of that so that it's not on my, like, otherwise I'll just be like, oh, we can do that next week, you know, so that I create accountabilities for myself. Just tricking. I have tricks, essentially.

Yeah. So with all those tricks, I think they fit into, like, probably a few different categories. But one of the things that you've talked about is building systems around your weaknesses, like templates and automations, reminders, people, complimentary roles of people, phone having alarms.

Set for everything that you might forget.

So you don't.

I don't know. I used to hold the calendar in my head and I was like, why am I doing that? It's so stressful. And then you miss things sometimes.

No, but the thing is, is that that structure, whatever the framework is going to hold you up but not hold you back, and that you're going to just stop doing that. Structure is important and it can be.

It doesn't have to be my system. It has to be a system that works for people. Like with my clients, the systems I have, they're not meant for the client. They're actually meant for the virtual assistant to be able to support the client. But people need different things. Your son needs different things. My son does. I do.

You do. And so giving people permission, I think is really important to just not take what works for other people and think that you have to make that, put that in place. But figure out what works for you. That's part of the fun is like figuring out, like the problem solving of figuring out how to make yourself better becomes part of the ADHD way.

So if I could, let me just say a couple things around structure that have helped me. Small work windows. Give yourself a small amount of time to bang something out quick in your calendar. Exercising. Exercising helps me a ton creative time. I can't mix creative. And I know some people are good at multitasking. Maybe ADHD people might be even better at it.

I don't know. But for me, if it's gotta be thought full time, I do best with my thoughtful time being calendar it out when I get to it. Set an alarm and just allow myself to just go deep into the creativity without actually doing any tasks. I need a noise free environment. My son needs to have music in his ears.

I used to be somebody who would hear sound. I can't focus with sound anymore. If I want to actually stay focused on tasks, I need to have no noise around me.

Yeah. And this is one area where you know my kid who's getting terrible grades, like, of course you're getting terrible grades. You got your music blasting. He's like, dad, there's no way I can focus if I don't have. And I'm like, that makes no sense. But. So that's another thing. Clutter.

I do really well in a no clutter situation. And other people do really well with just having their clutter all around them.

I don't believe that I have clutter. And every day I'm striving to be a Curt Kempton with no clutter around me. Everything has its place. But I am always. There'll be one moment of perfection and then it's a battle again.

Yeah. But I think that that's the thing, is that you spend your whole life trying to get clutter out of here and out of here and out of here. You get nothing done because you're constantly decluttering. I think some people can just embrace it and live in it and they know where everything's at and it's their mess.

Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

So there's people like that medication, diagnosis. I wish that I had had mine diagnosed earlier. And I know my diagnosis isn't my son's diagnosis, but the insight that it gave me was good. And hopefully this podcast has been helpful for some of you who maybe haven't been diagnosed yet. But I wouldn't substitute this for a diagnosis. I know some people who've Gotten on medications and said, I don't feel like myself anymore. I think that that also could tell you something important that you don't know right now. And there's not just one medication out there that's nothing important.

And every medication you can do in different doses. So for those of you that are like, I'm not going to get diagnosed because I don't be a zombie, I would encourage you to, like, just set that aside. Why don't you start somewhere? If you feel like you're a zombie, maybe cut it back or talk to your doctor about cutting it back or maybe a different medication, but talk to your doctor. Because going in blind, which is how I have done it up to a certain point in my life, I don't think I framed it right. And frankly, I didn't give other people grace either, including myself. So it'll help you, I think a ton. So that would be one thing I would also recommend.

I would say the value did not come from being medicated in the beginning. It did. It felt like amazing. But I think the value for my diagnosis was learning how my brain operates. They could tell me very specific things, Melody, you're going to do better in this type of environment. It was like giving me the hacks to my brain.

It was like your handbook. Like the handbook that you wish you always had.

Yes.

The last thing I've got on my list to just sort of talk to you guys about is. I've talked about exercise. I've talked about this in past podcasts too, though. Exercise and sleep go together. They're two very important pieces of bread to the sandwich. Getting out that energy, it's so good for you, but also making sure that you are resting enough to actually recover. I look back on my time when I was doing superhuman amounts of stuff and I didn't sleep a lot. I think I was about.

I was probably around four hours of sleep a night. And my body was able to do it for a certain period of time. But I remember when I broke and it was really heavy. And I know now that taking that time to get to bed early, I don't mind waking up early. I can get to bed early, but it's important and it allows your brain the time to recover.

I agree with you on that. I still struggle with exercise and sleep. I have my whole life. And it's not like we don't know that that is the key. Everybody, every doctor says it. We know that sleep is like, if you get enough sleep, it can actually extend your life. Right. And it's healing.

It's so many good things. And yet if you are somebody who goes to bed with a million channels on still, and I have different things that I do, but there are probably one or two days a month where I can't sleep, literally will stay up all night. And it might have to do with my femaleness as well. There is like a rhythm to that. But it's something I've had to learn to accept. And I think if we can focus on it and get better at it and improve, that's my goal. I don't think I'll ever be perfect at that because it is my greatest struggle. But it also affects our mental health.

I think people who have neurodivergent brains, like we, tend to have mental health issues at times as well. Probably, I would imagine, more than the average population. I probably should look that up. But I feel like I've heard that before.

I could see it. A lot of people are counting on you and there's a lot.

Well, it's chemistry too.

Yeah. Plus the chemistry. I feel like there's external pressures in addition. As an entrepreneur, you bring on external pressures in addition to the internal ones you may already be dealing with.

Absolutely. Yeah.

But that would be my hope from today's podcast. Actually, before I share my hope with today's podcast, one thing that you talked about, not being able to shut your brain off, I was going through that a lot and the thing that helped me was having that end of the day, what can I push?

You've talked about that. Yeah, yeah.

And I bring it up again because if I know that everything will be waiting for me tomorrow and everything that had to be done today is done. Inboxes zero checklist I've pushed the things to the next day that need to go push the next day. I've done things that have to be done today. I can call it a day. I mean, that's the difference between me sitting at dinner and just staring at my plate and just hammering out circular thought and having a fun, enjoyable, light hearted conversation with my family. It's night and day, different and of course same when you hit the pillow. But again, you might say, Curt, that is the worst possible advice that you could give to someone.

I wouldn't say that. But I will say I have no problem letting go of work most of the time. Like when I leave my computer and I go through cycles of this, that doesn't mean my brain shuts off. It's not even thinking about work sometimes it's thinking about the world. And the house, you know, there's a cobweb up there and that I've been trying to get, but it's at the cathedral ceiling. I could get a pole, but that, you know, these are the thoughts that I have in the middle of the night that just don't shut up. And so sometimes I'll just watch. I'll turn on a show and I won't even watch it.

I listen to it, and it helps me fall asleep. And sometimes I listen to brown noise, which I didn't know was different than white noise, but.

Yeah, what's brown noise? I've never heard that.

You know how there's different frequency? It just sounds. And I'm not sure why they call it. This has been the most ADHD podcast episode ever. Because at the same time, my screen is flashing like it's ADHD party time.

Yeah.

I keep watching your eyes. I'm like, when?

Again. Okay, so here's my hope as we come to the end of this podcast, is are you feeling at the end of this podcast, like you might be ADHD coded, that your brain is sort of some version of adhd? If you don't, great, you can still be super successful. If you do great, you can still be super successful. My encouragement you to be would, number one, think about getting a diagnosis. See if there's anything that can be done from a medical standpoint.

If it's an issue for you.

If it's an issue for you and it's. Yeah. If it's actually inhibiting your life. Yeah, I think that's a good point. The second piece to that is, why don't you try and figure out one area that this can be leveraged as a superpower that you're not currently doing? You probably already have figured out a bunch of it, but maybe just take time to, like, improve yourself and see if there's another area that you could leverage as a superpower. And maybe you can be really honest with you yourself and identify an area that's maybe, like, the not so good side, like something that you need to defend against. And if you were to just do one thing on each side. So those two things, if it's like my experience, you could discover something that truly gives you back, like some sanity, some life, some big gains or whatever.

Like, it's usually a small thing that makes the bigger gains. My experience is trying to get a really big thing to happen is so hard that a lot of times it doesn't actually ever happen.

Yeah. And I totally agree with everything you.

Just Said you have anything to add to it.

I could talk about this for miles because I love talking to people who have figured out different ways of handling it. Honestly, I love when people are newly diagnosed because they found an answer. And I remember that feeling, and I'm like, man, that energy that you have right after diagnosis, it's usually pretty profound. And it's like, I'm a part of a club. I think it's very easy to make it a crutch if you're not careful. It's not an excuse. But also have a lot of grace for yourself because it's really hard sometimes to live like this.

Yeah. And I always have to defend my parents. They really were doing the best they could with what they had.

Of course. Your parents are the best. I've met them. I love them. Yeah, they are.

They're fantastic. And I think that isn't important to understand is like, we're learning more about this all the time. When I was a kid, they genuinely didn't even know what the heck they're doing. They named it wrong. They literally named it the exact opposite of what it was supposed to be called.

Yeah. They did not want us to be labeled differently. Thinking of that we were different. They wanted us to be successful. And at the time, these kinds of things, like, you know, they were a big deal. And now it's so different. Like, I think the really. It was the age of TikTok where everybody started talking about ADHD and it just has been busting out since 2020, and it's cool.

And then there's a backlash, of course, because there's the people who are still like, that's just an excuse. But we are all very different and unique people. I wish that we had more tolerance for our uniquenesses. I will have tolerance for the normies. My husband is going to hate that I just said that. He doesn't. Does not like that term.

Well, if the normies can have a little tolerance for us, that could go a long way, too. But at the end of the day, we can't let someone else's tolerance for us determine what we're going to do. We just got to do it.

Yeah. And just keep on that entrepreneurial journey. Keep going. This is what we were made for.

That's right, you Ferraris and those of you that aren't Ferraris. Honda pilots are really great little vehicles. They kick butt and they run forever.

I think of it more as a Toyota, to be honest. Like, really reliable.

Yeah.

They run long time.

I'd put it in the same category? Yeah, for sure.

Okay. Yeah. Well, this has been fun.

Yeah, thanks, Melody. I love talking to you about all sorts of things, but, man, this topic brought you to life and your screen.

Just flickered all the whole time. It's the energy, the sparkle. Yeah. I would love to hear other people's hacks, what they do for their adhd. How do the people around us. If you are a person who has to deal with us, how do you handle it?

We'll have our spouses on. Like, I know we keep teasing this one. When we do have our spouses on, that is going to be a huge. Like in the office when they ask, you know, does anybody have any questions? I do. How dare you.

Yeah. Well, thank you. I think we should stop talking about stuff now because we could do it forever.

I know. We'll see you guys next week. This has been fantastic. Thanks, everybody, for joining us at the Sole Proprietor Podcast. It has been an absolute pleasure having these discussions with you. If you wouldn't mind taking just a few minutes to rate and review us wherever it is that you listen to podcasts, it would mean so much to us. We really do read each of these reviews and it gives us the opportunity to get the word out to more people who could benefit from hearing about topics like this about and so many others. If you want to engage with us at our website and maybe share some topics or ideas of other people that you'd like to hear on the podcast, feel free to go to soleproprietorpodcast.com and share with us your thoughts and ideas about what we could do in the future to bring even more light into the world.