Today we are kicking off a shiny new series for Entrepreneurs with ADHD. 

Despite the growing number of entrepreneurs who identify with ADHD, there’s still a great deal of confusion and controversy.

I turned to an expert in the field who is a professor of entrepreneurship who researches the impact of ADHD on entrepreneurship and also has ADHD himself.  

In fact, his own diagnosis in 2012 was a pivotal moment in his career path.  I’ve been following Professor Johan Wiklund of Syracuse University for the past few years and was thrilled that he was willing to chat with me. 

We have a wide-ranging conversation (in true ADHD style) about the research on gender differences in entrepreneurship with ADHD, building a business with ADHD in mind, and his own experiences being diagnosed later in life. 

Here's a sneak peek at what to expect: 

🚀 Turning ADHD Traits into Assets: Impulsivity isn't always a setback! Dr. Wiklund shares how traits commonly associated with ADHD can propel entrepreneurs to act on opportunities with a sense of immediacy and innovation.

🤝 The Perfect Team Formula: Find out why the best entrepreneurial teams are often a balanced mix of those with ADHD traits and those without, fostering an environment where strengths are maximized and struggles are expertly managed.

🧘‍♀️ Practical Mindfulness: Both Dr Wiklund and I take a pragmatic approach to meditation, and integrate mindfulness into our daily routines

📈 ADHD and the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Dr. Wiklund discusses how ADHD informs the traits of successful entrepreneurs – like hyperfocus and high work capacity – while acknowledging the necessity of support for areas like inattentiveness and procrastination.

✨ Special Advice for Women Entrepreneurs with ADHD: Overcome stereotypes, employ self-care, outsource the mundane, and maintain your entrepreneurial spark.

Mic Drop Moment:

"Am I being successful despite all these problems the doctors have identified? Or could it be that I've been able to use some of these traits to my advantage?"

— Johan Wiklund, Ph.D. 

Want to connect with Professor Wiklund? 

I asked if he had any social media accounts.  His answer: “No, I value my mental health.” 

So, you can only contact him through Syracuse University 

Read this article on ADHD and entrepreneurship by Dr Wiklund

The fellow professor and ADHD researcher he spoke about is Dr Kevin Antshel 

Companion episodes to check out:

• Short & Sassy episodes for the ADHD entrepreneur: https://bit.ly/4dbyXM3
• Full-length episodes for the ADHD entrepreneur: https://bit.ly/3UJJnLP

If you loved this episode,  please do me a solid and share it with your friends who are entrepreneurs who identify with ADHD traits. https://kite.link/what-the-research-has-to-say-about-adhd-and-entrepreneurship

Thank you! 

H: So one of my big beefs is that there's a ton of people who call ADHD the entrepreneur's superpower while just as many people say it's a permanent ticket on the struggle bus. So I decided, instead of contributing to all the noise and nonsense on this topic, I was going to reach out to an actual expert, professor of entrepreneurship who also happens to have ADHD himself. I'm welcoming professor Johan Wiklund.

G: Thank you very much, Diann, happy to be here.

H: Awesome. So can we start with your personal story and how you got probably more obsessed with ADHD and entrepreneurship than anyone else I know of.

So I thought to myself, am I being successful despite all these problems that those doctors have identified or could it actually be that I've been able to use some of these traits to my advantage? And the thing was that I couldn't really find anything at all about in this academic literature talking about potential advantages of ADHD. And so the next thing I did was because I've been doing research on entrepreneurship for, like, 25 years now, I started seeing, is there a connection with entrepreneurship. So, I thought just as a hunch, there might be some connections so what I did was I called one of the clinical psychologists at Syracuse University.

I've never met him, never heard his name so thee other said, I'm a colleague over at the business school, could I take you to lunch, there's something I wanna talk to you about. And he said, sure and so, I took him to lunch, and I said, I have this really weird hypothesis. I think there may actually be some positive sides to ADHD, and I think they might become particularly salient in the area of entrepreneurship. And so I just threw that out there and as opposed to me, this guy, Kevin Antshel, he's a thoughtful person so he took a good time thinking about my question, and he said, I think you might have a point there.

I haven't ever seen anything in the literature, and he's read, like, he's been doing ADHD research for, like, 30 years. And he said, I haven't really seen anything at all out there, but it seems to make some sense. And I took that, like, as a ticket to say this can be a legitimate area of research. And as an anecdote, I, after a couple of years, I contacted one of the leading scholars in ADHD, and I said the same thing to him. And he said, oh, no, no, that can't be. I think you're completely misunderstood what ADHD is about. And then after I started collecting some evidence, a few years later, I reached out to him again, and he had to admit that, well, you might actually be up to something here so I was very happy about that.

So this is an area that certainly is growing and as you know, as you pointed to yourself in your introduction, there is a literature out there that talks about ADHD as a superpower and in entrepreneurship specifically, and it's written by competent people. But at the same time, you know, most of what they're talking about has not been backed up by solid research evidence to date. But fortunately, now we're starting to get some evidence, which in part supports some of the things people are claiming and contradicts this as well. So I'll be happy to unpack those kinds of things, so we can see maybe where is the research at the moment and which things do we have support for and which don't we have any support for.

H: I would love to unpack that with you and actually I’m smiling so much as you're talking because 2 of the things I'm noticing that I have in common with you as a fellow person with ADHD. As a curious, thoughtful person who doesn't just want to take things at the surface level, but really when I'm curious about something, I'm all in, and I'm gonna do a deep dive, and I may not come out for quite a while and so because of your curiosity, you thought I have to find out more about this. And I'm wondering before we get into the unpacking when you heard one of your colleagues say, you know what, I think you might be on to something. And then another one said, you don't know what you're talking about, basically. Was there something in you that said, okay, now I really have to do this because I have to know for sure which viewpoint is right or maybe even a little, I gotta prove this guy wrong.

G: Absolutely, I mean, it's so funny because if you look at we can get into what ADHD actually is, a diagnosis. I mean, as you know, it's a psychiatric diagnosis, and it focuses on inattention. You know, they're having problems and focus on things that you find boring. But you might very well find, being able to focus on things that you enjoy. And I think it's really interesting if you take that trait alone and then you kind of look at that through the lens of entrepreneurs.

If you can can say, well, that actually gives you the ability to you're curious. You wanna try new things. You can multitask because you're easily distracted. You could do many things at the same time. So I think any of these kinds of, let's call them traits, you look at which have been identified as weaknesses in the literature. You might as well look at them from a different perspective from entrepreneurship, and you can see you can turn that into an advantage.

H: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, several of your publications refer to 1 ADHD trait in particular as being highly correlated with entrepreneurship, and that is impulsivity and distractibility means, okay, you might be pulled away, but maybe you'll find your way back. But it's the impulsivity that you've written about extensively That seems to suggest that when you're going to start something new, you're going to found a company. You're gonna start a new adventure.

G: Yeah.

H: You do need to be able to follow that impulse and not get distracted by uncertainty because once that happens, you're probably gonna get derailed right?

G: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the important thing about impulsivity is it as you know, because you have ADHD yourself, is this inability to wait, you know, so it's like and the propensity for action deliberation. So it's like you want to do things and you want to do them immediately instead of waiting. And I think it's, you know, if you look at entrepreneurship, you're an entrepreneur yourself. So you know that there's a lot of uncertainty you always have a choice. Should I do this or should I not do it? Should I wait? It was like, most people would just say, okay.

But this is I don't know if this is gonna be successful or not, so I'm not gonna do anything. And so, I mean, my favorite example is actually Christopher Columbus. I think, I'm sure he must have had ADHD because it's typical, like, example. Oh, everybody says, no, no, no, no. I'm not gonna go and see if I can get to India through the other way because God knows where I'm gonna end up, I might die on a way.

Whereas he's more like, well, of course, that's exciting. It's something I like to see, what's there so you kind of you do stuff. So that's a link that because there's so much uncertainty in entrepreneurship, you don't know what's going to happen. Impulsivity is the thing that kind of can trigger you to actually do stuff. It doesn't mean that you will be successful. I mean, as we might talk about later, there's a lot of entrepreneurs who don't succeed, at least not the 1st or 2nd time. But at least we can see that people who have these who have ADHD, they're much more likely to actually act on these opportunities that they're discovering and try to become entrepreneurs.

H: Absolutely too. I think, you know, being curious about figuring something out, solving a problem. You know, how many entrepreneurial ventures start with someone noticing a problem, looking at the current market solutions and saying, I think I could do better or there's a gap. And I wonder what it would look like if we tried this and you're off to the races. But if you're not able to follow that curiosity with an impulse, with an intuition, just to see what happens. I mean, I'm sure you've gotten yourself into all kinds of trouble over your lifetime thinking what could happen if I do this? But that's how it starts and in the process, we learn that we can fail and try again.

And I think something I've noticed a lot, and I'm really curious to know your thoughts about this, something I've noticed a lot is that, like you, I've seen there are lots of people with ADHD traits who go into entrepreneurship and are very successful. But there are others who have these same traits who meet with failure after failure. So like you, I'm very curious about why this is and I think and I'm really curious to know what you think about this. I believe one of the reasons is different people have different relationships with failure and what they make it mean about them.

G: Absolutely, I think there are many reasons, but, I mean, I think one great example that I encountered was an entrepreneur who was on his I think he was starting his, like, 10th, 15th business. So, of course, I asked him after a while, you know, what has happened to all these other businesses you were running in the past? Did you fail and he goes, I didn't really fail, but I got bored. So it's like, I was doing these things and once these businesses were up and running, I didn't feel a challenge. It wasn't interesting, too many more said I'd decided I'd close this and moved on. And I think it's typical of people with ADHD that you're like really good at this, the very initial phases of being an entrepreneur when every day you get into the office, it's like a new challenge. Something new is happening, it's always exciting.

You talk to new customers but as you know, once you started a business, you've been running it for a few years, it becomes much more mundane. And then you start managing people, you start doing the same thing over and over again. First of all, I think the advantages you might have had, thanks to ADHD, they kind of wear off and also because with ADHD, you're easily bored. You might even decide that it's not fun anymore. I need another challenge. I need to start another business. So I think that that is part of the explanation, at least, you know, that people with ADHD typically are not in it for the long haul, but more like want something new, exciting again.

H: I 100% agree as a matter of fact, the way I talk about boredom is that people like us treat it as a life threatening condition. We just can't tolerate it, don't wanna tolerate it. The minute we start to feel it, we are off doing something else. And all businesses become boring to some point and if you're really practicing what I call radical self acceptance of your ADHD traits, you would build the expectation in from the beginning that once it starts to get boring, you have already been cultivating someone else that you can hand it off to, who can move it forward. Like, not everybody needs to be in something from beginning to end. Sometimes we need someone to get it out of the starting blocks and then hand it off like a relay race to the next person.

G: Absolutely and another option that we've seen with some people with ADHD running businesses is that they continue innovating. So rather than having a traditional CEO role where, you know, you mainly manage people and maybe customers, they take on more, a CTO role where they work with developing new products, new technologies, and so forth, which kind of gives the net excitement and sense of novelty. So that's another way kind of carving out a role within the business where you can get more excitement, get more novelty in a traditional CLL role.

H: What do you think about the, advice I often hear given to entrepreneurs? It says, well, you're the creative visionary, you're the idea person. What you need to do is partner with or hire an implementer, someone who can execute you. Do you think that's good advice in general or maybe not?

G: I do. We actually do have some research evidence. We looked at all, actually in Denmark, all new ventures in Denmark, and we looked at whether the founders have ADHD or not. And then we focus on only those that are started by teams. And we've seen that actually the best teams that have 1 person with ADHD. Let's say talk about we can talk about only 2 person teams because that's what you're talking about. If 1 person has an ADHD diagnosis and the other one doesn't act, that's where you find the highest performance. If both people have an ADHD diagnosis, that's the worst. And if you interrupt them of the NASA and ADHD diagnosis, that's like the medium, so to speak.

So, yeah, there's actually evidence that if you have ADHD and you're looking to start a business, it might be a good idea to start with somebody who has the opposite traits. You know, I can speculate, I haven't done research, but I've seen some research. I think that might relate to romantic relationships as well, where I think that those where you have somebody who might be opposite of yourself might lead to more long term relationships. And the reason for that is I mean, when I've interviewed a lot of folks that run businesses and have ADHD, it turns out that they actually outsource of the self regulation to their partners. In other words, as you know, it might be hard to regulate.

For example, if you're an entrepreneur, you might work this happens all the time. People with entrepreneurs with ADHD, they work, like, 18, 20 hours per day, and they just crash and burn. I mean, they just burn out within months and, of course, if you don't have a partner kind of make sure that you don't work 20 hours per day, but maybe 12 hours. And, you know, you actually do eat ever so often, and you get a few hours of sleep every night, that can be very helpful. So I think it's the same thing in a business that you have a business partner kinda make sure that you don't go overboard.

H: So we've been talking a little bit about impulsivity as being one of those ADHD traits that's probably pretty well suited for entrepreneurship, especially in fast growing industries like tech, for example. What are some of the other traits that you think are particularly well suited to entrepreneurship for those of us with ADHD?

G: Yeah. So, I mean, as you know, inattention or distractibility is a trait. So we know that people with ADHD have a hard time focusing on things that they find boring. On the other hand, people with ADHD are wonderfully good at focusing on things that they enjoy. I think the best example of that is probably Michael Phelps, the swimmer, that an ADHD diagnosis since he was a child. I know that he for 4 years, he swam every day. Didn't even miss on Christmas day or another day of the year. So I think that that's actually an advantage that once as you find that thing that you really enjoy, you can hyperfocus on that.

We know a lot of kids with ADHD, they tend to focus on video games, which isn't always the most productive thing to do. But, I mean, you might be able to, you know, find out the things that you really enjoy, and then you might be able to turn that into business. I would say that's another thing. This ability to hyperfocus on the things that you find really, exciting and then we have this. I mean, if you think about ADD's 3 things, it's inattention, it's hyperactivity, and it's impulsivity. So I've spoken a bit about now about impulsivity first, then about inattention, which can actually lead to hyperfocus. And then when it comes to hyperactivity, it's simply this work capacity.

It's like, you know, as an entrepreneur, you have to work a lot of hours and people with ADHD have enormous work capacity. Very often I might need less sleep than the average person and so forth so I would say that that's also an advantage. I mean, once you find that thing that you're really passionate about it and you have ADHD, you can spend a lot of hours on that. And if you can channel that into your entrepreneurship, you can actually you can actually do very well.

H: So let's now pivot to some of the traits that are not so helpful for entrepreneurship and probably not very helpful in other types of occupations either, like inattentiveness, like, procrastination, that's a biggie.

G: Yeah, yeah. I mean so just as you're good at focusing on the things you enjoy, you're really bad at focusing on the things you don't enjoy. The thing is that even if you're an entrepreneur, the great thing about entrepreneurs is that you kind of create your own work. You create what you do yourself at the same time, there's going to be things that are not as enjoyable right? And the thing that every entrepreneur with ADHD I've ever interviewed, they all talk about accounting doing the books and that's like the thing.

So, I mean, I met so many people that they just don't do it. They just don't do it and after, you know, whatever time, the IRS comes running after them and, you know, they have to close the businesses. So my advice in that case is that, you know, find somebody that could be like a friend, a spouse, a business partner, a professional person, to do those things in the business that you don't enjoy doing yourself because there will always be those kinds of things. So I think that's one of the downsides. I mean, you're more like a specialist than a generalist, you could say. Another thing has to do with structure and I think this is like, this thing where as a person with ADHD, you like doing new stuff, you like improvising.

You don't like routine when it's the same thing day after day. On the other hand, it's typically something that is good for you to have the structure because otherwise you might go overboard. And that can be a problem in entrepreneurship that nobody else is telling you. You know, you have to be at work at 9, you work until 5, and then you go home. You can actually as you know, a lot of people with ADHD have disturbed sleep patterns. So you might wake up, like, 4:30 in the morning, and you're ready, you know, you're full of energy, ready to work and I think it's like there are 2 sides to that coin.

On the one hand, you know, you can work whenever you want, but on the other hand, you know, you can't go overboard and work way too much. And so I think putting some structure into your life, into your day, and so forth, I think, is really, really important. So, yeah, those are a couple of the challenges that I think people with ADHD run into. And I'll point out a third thing, I've done studies on self care, both positive self care, such as sleeping, eating, meditating, exercising, but also negative, such as ing drugs and drinking alcohol and stuff. And what we can see there is that entrepreneurs with ADHD, they have greater vulnerabilities, and we can see that they're more likely to engage in negative self care.

And it also seems that the engagement in such stuff has a stronger effect in terms of both their business performance and their well-being. And, conversely, if they do, like, meditate, sleep, eat, exercise, that seems to have a stronger effect than on the people without ADHD. So that will be another caveat that, you know, you need to, you can't get too absorbed by the business. You need to think about those self care behaviors and make sure you, create room for them.

H: It sounds like you and I think in a very similar way about many things, including I don't think I've ever heard anyone else refer to things like drinking and drugging and all the other addictive type habits we could get into as negative self care. I refer to it as all behaviors habit forming, these are habits. These are habits that we are more prone to develop, and they're harder for us to get rid of, but they all serve a purpose, don't they? Everything that we do, every single thing we do is serving a purpose. And maybe the case of watching too much Netflix or YouTube or TikTok, whatever. The purpose of serving is filling your time because there's filling your time because there's something you should be doing that is boring to you, and you're resisting, and you don't wanna do it. So you just fill up your time with this other thing so it actually is serving a purpose. It would be considered negative self care because you're not gonna move the needle if that's how you're spending your time.

G: It's also interesting, that's no, I mean, you're perfectly correct in everything you're saying. It's also really interesting to know that if they've looked at studies now in the mainstream, excuse me, mainstream ADHD literature where they look at, you know, people taking medication, people meditating, people doing exercise and it seems that they have about the same effect.

So it's like, it's extremely important for anybody with ADHD to exercise and try to get into some kind of meditation routine. I seem to be unable to do it myself. I just try to exercise every day. I mean, I've become really good when it comes to that. But this thing about even taking 5 or 10 minutes to get into mindfulness routine has been very difficult and then you know? But it seems that they are just as important, and have the same effects as if you take some kind of medication so it's really, really important.

H: Well, I have a suggestion for you on the meditation front.

G: Okay, let's hear it.

H: I think it's just so happens I've been a practicing Buddhist for almost 20 years. But I don't sit on the cushion with my legs crossed and, you know, think of nothing. It's impossible, you know that. It's not just an ADHD brain. There's no human brain that can just go blank, otherwise, we would be dead. But I try to turn things into a more meditative practice. For example, just taking a walk instead of being up in my head or looking around to see if there's any people to interact with, which would be my default mode, I can look at the ground and pay attention to how the leaves crunch under my shoes or how even or uneven the ground is.

I could pay attention to just the circle around my feet, how it feels, how it looks. That's taking an everyday thing and making it more meditative. You can wash your dog in a meditative way. You can fold your laundry in a meditative way. You can clean your desk in your office before you go home for the day in a meditative way, but it just requires that you actually are paying attention to what you're doing. But knowing that it's only gonna be for 5 minutes, you could probably do that. So I'd be curious to know if you try that out what you think.

G: Thank you, I appreciate the tip. I'll do my best to implement it.

H: Okay.

G: So should we say a few things about gender differences potentially, I think that's important.

H: I know you haven't done a lot of research in that area.

G: I'm doing it now, obviously, I haven't published, but I'm actually, we're doing that a lot now. In part because, I speak to people, you know, the clinicians and asking them what are like hot topics ADHD proper, in the mainstream literature, and also because I'm working with people who have, like, done the research on gender. And I think myself now since I started doing that, I think it's really, really important because there seem to be some important differences.

H: Absolutely, yeah. As a matter of fact, I think I may have shared with you when I was in graduate school at UCLA in the nineties, I was working with little boys with ADHD because in the early nineties, little boys were the only ones who were being identified. And at that time, I had a social skills group with elementary school age boys. And because I was an eager graduate student who always wanted to do more because I have ADHD, I suggested to my supervisors, would it be okay if I got to know their parents because I'm only seeing these kids a couple hours a week, it's probably not gonna have any lasting value. Maybe if I met their parents, I could give them suggestions for how they could continue to implement these things at home.

Well, what happened was, my group was in the evening, and most of the time, these boys were being brought by their fathers. So I started to meet a bunch of these dads, and I started to think, hey, wait a minute. These men have the same traits as their sons, but no one and you know this because you've been doing this for a long time. No one in the early nineties was identifying any adults with ADHD, we were still thinking of this only for kids. So I go back to my supervisors and say, excuse me, I know I'm just a lowly grad student, and I don't know anything, but I've noticed that these dads seem to have the exact same traits. So I don't think that this condition is one that we outgrow.

And, of course, they said, oh, don't be ridiculous. We know that this is a condition that's only in boys, and they're outgrown by, adolescents. So I said, I'll tell you what, this is what I wanna do my master's thesis on. And it won't surprise you that half of these men were extremely successful in their careers, and half of them were struggling in every way, vocationally, occupationally, relationally, socially, and financially. And that was the beginning of me thinking, I'm pretty sure this is a lifelong condition, but it was still at least another decade before anyone really started thinking about this in girls and women.

Same thing when it comes to ADHD, if we think about, you know, things such as being aggressive and angry, which if you're impulsive, you tend to easily get angry, being angry, things such as kind of running around in the classroom, not sitting in your chair. A lot of these out acting behaviors associated with ADHD, they're also much more male coded. They're much more acceptable for men, excuse me, for boys or men than for girls and women. So I think that's really important to understand that as a female entrepreneur with ADHD, you kind of you overcome 2 stereotypes.

You know, and we also know that because of this girls and women tend to internalize a lot of their symptoms and more like anxiety, depression rather than aggression and hyperactivity. So it seems that when we have looked at the studies we have today, it seems that the advantages to ADHD in entrepreneurship are largely associated with the male characteristics of ADHD. And also that if you just compare ADHD, excuse me, entrepreneurs with ADHD who are men and women, it seems that the men perform better than the women do.

H: That’s definitely have been my experience.

G: Yep. So if you know, so when we it seems that it's really hard to overcome those 2 stereotypes at the same time. And another thing we found that I thought was really interesting was we looked at, entrepreneurial teams and then we looked at team conflict. And it comes as no surprise to anybody that those entrepreneurs with ADHD were more likely to get into conflict for obvious reasons. I mean, first of all, you're differently wired, so you have different perspectives on the world, that, of course, is a great advantage. But it also leads to more friction, right?

Because essentially, it's easy to have a team where everybody is the same, that it's more harmonious, but also that people with ADHD tend to create more conflict because of their impulsivity and so forth. But we have found that the women entrepreneurs, they suffered more from these conflicts because, you know, as a woman, you're not supposed to get into conflicts. You're supposed to resolve conflicts right. So we found that they weren't more prone to conflict than men entrepreneurs, but took a greater hit in terms of their well-being when they got into conflicts.

H: One of the things I have also noticed, and you may be studying in your current research, is that I think women, in general, are culturally conditioned to avoid making mistakes.

G: Yeah, absolutely.

H: We wanna be perfect. We wanna get the A's. We wanna do it right and unlike most boys with ADHD who may struggle to do well in school, most girls with ADHD are less hyperactive, are more interested in pleasing the authority figures, the teachers, the adults, their parents. So they do tend to do better in school. But what is the cost of that is their self esteem and is their willingness to take risks and do things where the outcome is uncertain because they've been conditioned to avoid mistakes. Whereas boys who are conditioned to boys will be boys right?

Boys will go do things. They'll make mistakes. They'll fall down. They'll screw up. They'll cause fights. They'll cause conflict. But that's a very important distinction because they learn that you can make a mistake and recover from it. They learn that you can fail even repeatedly and eventually figure out what you need to do differently. Girls, by trying to avoid making mistakes, miss out on that very important of education that would make them better at entrepreneurship.

G: Absolutely, a 100%, that's absolutely what they found when they were researching about ADHD and how it affects girls and how it affects boys, there's a big difference. So there are these unfortunate stereotypes. I mean, on the other hand, you might say that if you're a woman with ADHD, you could just say, well, screw this. And you can say, you know, I'm gonna break all the stereotypes in the world.

So I'm gonna start this business. I'm gonna be an entrepreneur. I'm gonna do these things that are completely add up, completely unexpected. And we can see I mean, I've seen it firsthand with some of my former students, some women who are doing phenomenal work. I mean, they have ADHD. They're being phenomenal entrepreneurs, but it's largely because they kind of they essentially just say screw all the all these expectations, from, people have on me, and they kind of break in all the stereotypes.

H: I think we have to be able to carve our own path, create our own rules, and decide what suits us best. Because I also think women tend to be conditioned to seek permission and you and I both know the adage, it's better to seek forgiveness than to seek permission. And I think that's that advice is more easily adopted by most men just of the differences in all the things we're talking about. Something else I've noticed in your published research that I'm really fascinated by and I wonder if we can unpack just a little bit is like me.

Because I have a mental health background, I've noticed that some people who've experienced adverse childhood events, childhood trauma of a variety of kinds, they have impairments as a result of this pretty much for life in spite of therapy and other types of treatments. Whereas some people, much smaller percentage, somehow their childhood adverse experience will trigger what I refer to as post traumatic growth, and they develop resilience. I know at least one of your published works has talked a lot about that, could we go into that just a little bit?

G: Sure, that's a really important aspect of this and it's actually we can talk about it specifically, about, like, the traits of ADHD. I think, like, I can give you a couple of examples. I think that, you know, this thing about having well, any condition where dyslexia is another famous example, by the way, where you're having problems in areas that other people find really easy. I can take myself as an example, it's kind of frustrating being a professor, you know, and then virtually unable to fill out a form. I find it extremely difficult to fill out forms, whether it's on paper, whether it's online. My wife always has to help me do those kinds of things. But the thing is that if you learn from an early age to overcome those kinds of problems, people just they breeze through them.

There's nothing for them but for you, it's actually difficult. That actually builds tenacity and discipline and that's really important in entrepreneurship. So I think that's one aspect is important. The other thing you kind of touched upon that when you were talking about gender differences. The other thing is, is kind of failing. I mean, if you have ADHD because you procrastinate, because you have a hard time focusing on things that you find difficult, it's likely that you're going to fail, for example, in school, at tests and whatnot, right? So you have this experience of failing, And that's also something that's really important in entrepreneurship because, you know, whether we're talking about failing completely, you know, going bankrupt or just failing launching a product, failure is inevitably an aspect of entrepreneurship.

So I think that those are 2 and there's also a third thing. You know, like I mentioned with my own problems of filling out forms. I think when you have these problems in areas that others find easy in order to get through school and other situations in life, you need to seek help from others so that's also something we need in entrepreneurship. So I think you're absolutely right, there are these things. You face these problems in childhood through your life that can actually become important aspects as you pursue entrepreneurship.

H: Yes, I think resilience is, I really think resilience is probably one of the most important things.

G: I said tenacity and discipline because I couldn't remember the word the word resilience at the moment.

H: Well and I feel like I want to apologize to you because, you had to fill out a form to book this, interview, and then there are some difficulties with the technology getting started to record this. And it's really kind of funny, that after all the experience I have, all the experience you have, some of those old triggers are just so close to the surface because we were both getting frustrated with the technology, getting this call started. And I thought, oh, no, he's just gonna say, forget this, I don't wanna talk to you anymore, it's too difficult to you know because I know that I have a low frustration tolerance and I have ADHD, so I'm assuming you do too. And I'm like, no, I gotta fix this, please give me a second. But not giving up got us to the point where we were actually able to have and record this very interesting conversation so there's resilience in not doing that.

G: Excellent demonstration, perfect.

H: You're welcome. So what do you think is going to happen in the future? Where do you see the future of your research going? Where do you see the trends in entrepreneurship going? And if someone is identifying as an ADHD entrepreneur who happens to be a female, because we have talked a little bit about some of the disadvantages, what advice would you give to her? You can address those in any order you like.

G: Yes, so let's talk first about where I see things going. So I think that, as you may know, that the number of people being diagnosed with ADHD is increasing year by year. Some people talk about that that's big pharma, that kind of pressuring us. But that might be true to some extent, but we can see that in other countries such as my birth country, Sweden, where medicine is or health care is socialized. We see the same trends. We see the trends all over the world that, you know, the percentage of people being diagnosed with ADHD is increasing rapidly, actually.

And currently, it's about 13 a half percent of all adolescents in the US have a diagnosis. That's a very large share so I mean so that's one thing. And another thing I think is that we can just see in the last decade that people now speak more openly about mental health issues, whether that's anxiety, depression, or ADHD. So I think that, you know, we have more people with a diagnosis and people are also more open and willing to talk about it. So I think that if we just become more and more, prevalent in society, and I think, for example, workplaces, they have now started talking about neurodiversity and the importance of you know having neurodiverse teams and looking at these kind of conditions as one aspect of diversity in addition to gender and race and so forth.

So I think that's one thing that's happening, that we just see a greater tolerance for acceptance of openness about ADHD and I think it's really, really good. What I'm doing myself in terms of my work is that because I know that people with ADHD are attracted to entrepreneurship, but at the same time, they often shy away from higher education because our education system is so poorly adapted to the needs of people with ADHD. What I'm doing myself is I'm in the process of developing entrepreneurship education specifically for kids with ADHD. And, you know, that not at the university level, but at, you know, grade and high school level because I think it's important that they get exposed to this early on because, A, there's a high probability that they're not gonna go to college, and, B, there's a high probability that they're gonna start a business, so that's where I'm working. It's more on the educational side than the research side.

In terms of research, I'm actually, I'm gonna dig deeper into these general issues because I think they're really, really important. And we're seeing that, women entrepreneurs with ADHD seem to be at a large disadvantage. So I think it's important that kind of thanks to your podcast and other mechanisms that we get that message out there and that we get a better understanding of it. So but you also asked what the people with ADHD should think about. I think that's or you asked me what women with ADHD might think about as they enter entrepreneurship. So, I mean, I've been through a couple of let me mention maybe 4 or 5 different things. So one thing was this about fun versus boring tasks. There any job, any profession, anything you do, there's gonna be some things that are fun, some that are boring.

Try to outsource the boring stuff. Get somebody else to do it because you're not gonna do it yourself. Just like whether that's, you know, a friend, a family member, a professional, doesn't matter, try to get somebody else to do it. The other thing is this thing about structure. The fact that you might hate it, but you need it. So same thing there, whether that's you just making a weekly schedule for yourself, making sure your phone gives you an alarm whenever you need to eat, or whether that's through a professional ADHD coach or a spouse, whatever. I don't care. I think it's just important you get a sound work.

Another thing is that we know that largely because we live in our heads, like you said, we don't, reflect, we don't meditate. People with ADHD tend to pour self insight, poor insights into who we are, our strengths and weaknesses, so I think it's important to understand, you know, what am I good at? What am I not so good at? And, I mean, that's important for everyone, but it's, like, a challenge for a person with ADHD to understand those things.

So I think that's something that that you might wanna, spend time on and I think that meditation is one way to approach that. And then, as I mentioned, the thing about self care, the importance of engaging those positive behaviors and trying to stay away from negative ones as much as you can. And maybe finally, you know, enthusiasm is a great thing. People with ADHD, they're enthusiastic. But, I mean, be enthusiastic, but don't get carried away. Don't I often say as a joke, I said, anything that's worth doing is worth overdoing. I don't think that's a good…

H: My version is too much is never enough.

G: Okay that's a safe thing, I agree. So but, I mean, I'm not sure that's always a good way to lead your life. So I think that be enthusiastic but try not to overextend. So those would be, I think, my advice. And, specific for women entrepreneurs is, like, stick it out, hang in there. You're up against the stereotypes that, aren't in your favor, but, you know, you can overcome them.

H: I think that's fantastic advice and just thinking that some of us, and I know you have this trait, and I certainly do too, knowing that most of the world is probably betting against you doesn't make you wanna throw in the towel, it makes you wanna double down and prove them wrong.

G: Great. I think that's right attitude, and that's why you've been successful, I think, throughout your life as an entrepreneur running your own business.

H: Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I have really been looking forward to it, and you did not disappoint. This is a wonderful conversation that I think is gonna help a lot of people.

G: Thank you very much.