Leveraging your ADHD Superpower

Business brain, episode 644 for Wednesday, April 30th, International Jazz Day 2025. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain. Welcome back to Business Brain. If it's not your first time here, and if it is, welcome. We are the show where we take a few ideas, we crunch them, we dissect them, we use them to tune our business brains so that we can all keep living those charmed lives. Our sponsor for this episode is the Insta360x5 camera. We can go to store.insta360.com and if you use the promo code brain and you're one of the first 30 purchases of this Insta360 through that promo code, you get free invisible selfie stick added to your order of the Insta360X5. We'll talk about that in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Northern California, I'm Shannon Jean. How's it going, man?

It comes and it goes. It's actually been great. Yeah. Last week was. Was spectacular.

Settled here. That's awesome.

Yeah.

And it's jazz. What movie was that that had the jazz?

Is it jazz hands? A lot of movies that have jazz hands. I don't know. I live in a theater household, man, so I think every movie has jazz hands.

Jazz hands. That's awesome. That's good. I love that insta360. That's awesome.

Yeah.

I'm curious to learn about what is an invisible selfie stick. So I'm going to have to go check it out.

You got to check it out. Yeah. I'll talk a little bit about it in a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's awesome.

Then you're going to have to go learn about it. Yeah, I will.

I'm using their webcam right now. I think it's amazing. Follows me around. It changed my whole dynamic of the way I got me more comfortable being in front of the camera. So it's pretty cool. Nice. I really, I really enjoy it.

Yeah, I have to check that out, too.

But, hey, you could see, I. I jump. I love jumping from topic to topic and the shiny object and squirrel and chasing. And that's because.

No.

Yeah, I, I'm, you know, I've never been formally diagnosed, but I'm an old guy, so that really wasn't the thing when you were growing up. But I always say, well, my son was, and he's exactly like me. And so I. I always talk about my business adhd, but I have it in my personal life as well. I'm jumping around.

I too resemble that remark.

Yeah, yes.

Not formally diagnosed, however.

Yeah, but come on, I mean, come on, who are we trying to kid?

Well, but I think, I think that's part of the key. I was having this conversation with one of my bandmates on Friday night when your text came in and I missed it. So, you know, there you go. But we, I'm not trying to kid anyone and I think that's part of the key to leveraging your ADHD is just embrace it or whatever it is. Like, I don't. Again, you know, I call it adhd. I don't know what it is, but yeah, embrace it.

Yes.

Learn how to live with it. Make lists, do the things you need, whatever it is.

Well, and I'm, I'm, I really believe it's not a flaw. It's, it's, it can be a massive creative engine for you. And if you look at some of the most successful entrepreneurs and business people, they share many of the same traits. The key is, to your point, is learning to manage it, learning to focus on things. And that's what we're going to talk about today.

Yeah, well, you do, you get the ability, in addition to the distractibility, there is also that hyper focus that comes right alongside that with adhd. When you're into something, man, you're in the flow, right?

Yeah, yeah, you're, you know, the term everybody loves to use now is locked in. Well, when you have ADHD and you're locked in, like, I mean, you can create a whole company in one night. You know what I mean? Sitting down, drilling in, building this, building that, especially now with all the tools that are available. I mean, I don't know how many tabs I have open in my web browser right now, but I guarantee it's 30, maybe more. Because it's just like, I can go here and pull this and do that and do this. So having that wide bandwidth, but then being able to hyper focus down superpower.

Most people don't have it can be correct. I find that learning how to manage it, to use a dear old friend's terminology, learning how to live with yourself. He told me once, he's like, it's all about learning how to live with yourself, Dave. And, and I don't think he meant for this to stick with me. This was probably 40 years ago that he said this to me, but it has stuck with me. And I hear it almost every day because learning how to live with yourself and who you are and all of those things, for me, certainly, whatever this is, ADHD is part of it. And learning how to tap into that hyper focus when I need to and how to catalyze it is key. But then also those times where I just let myself kind of have. It's International Jazz Day to have a jam session where I'm just jumping around from thing to thing. But there's a. There's a thread in my head. There's a thread. Right. Well, it's a jam session and that's a natural.

Yeah. I also, folks with some level of adhd, like I said, whatever you want to call it, we'll call it that for the purpose of the show. You have this natural ability to connect all kinds of different things, right? Where, yes, you have this hyper focus, but you also like this broad view that allows you to connect all these unrelated ideas and create new things out of them. And I love it. That, to me, the hyper focus is great because you can really knock stuff out, but the connecting unrelated ideas to create something new and to think of something in a completely different manner, man, it's power in my life. I have experience with it and trying to figure things out and not taking. I mean, if you look at what I post, I post like you. We post tons of these optimistic things, ideas, all this stuff. And the comments are full of people that miss it. Right. They just want to say why that won't work.

Yes.

Well, sure, you can convince yourself anything won't work, but this the first step to. Because everybody says it doesn't work until somebody does it. Right.

So I had somebody today. It was an agent, like an agent buying podcast ads on behalf of somebody else. They came to me for one of our shows and said this. I've convinced this client to advertise on. On such and such a show. But this client says no one has ever been able to show me that advertising on a website leads to more sales. Now, display advertising on the web is a $300 billion industry. So if that statistic isn't enough to convince you that other people have seen success with this, I told the agent, I'm like, okay, I know who this client is. I think they'd be a great fit. I actually even know the person, and I think that they make a great client, make a great product and all this stuff.

Sure.

But if they've convinced themselves that this is a failure before it starts, I want no part in it.

No, no, yeah, exactly. You're starting off as such a deficit.

Yeah. I need everyone to believe that there is is going to be success. And then we make that happen together. Yes, yes.

And it's. You can always convince other people. If you listen to other people, they'll always convince you it'll never work. And if you listen to your own brain sometime. I think part of ADHD also is being a bit delusional. Right. And I say that in the most positive way because.

Reality distortion.

Yeah. That delusion of thinking, I can figure this out, I know nobody else has, or I've never seen this work before. I can do this. How can I make money at this?

That.

That pulls you forward, man. Yeah. And yeah, it's super important. One of the other things that I love, love, love about. I'm putting on my D and D because I forgot.

There it is. Distractibility, man.

Dang it. Dang it. Super distracted. But I believe based on my own experience, my risk tolerance is much, much, much, much, much, much higher than people that non. Hghg. Let's call them something. My risk tolerance is off the charts. Not. It's not always in a good way.

I don't think that's necessarily a guaranteed trait of adhd because the opposite can also be true. The analysis. Paralysis. Oh, I guess so that fuels that anxiety. That. That ADHD can fuel that anxiety and that anxiety can. Can paralyze you down. Yeah.

My thing is I'm less afraid of uncertainty.

So maybe I don't think that's adhd.

Yeah. Okay.

I mean. I mean.

Yeah.

I'm not saying you're not. I. I know that you are. I know this is true.

Of course.

I just think this might be perhaps a different. A different.

A different part.

Yes. I don't know. Yes.

Some other problem or opportunity. Opportunity. Whatever it is.

I did want to share though, because I always like to be positive and share tips that. I've always known that the ability to hyper focus was a superpower. And it's not something that everyone figures out how to turn on at will. And I. And certainly even though I figured out some ways of doing it, I still struggle with it sometimes. It's like I know I just need to focus here. And. And we talked about it on the show too. Well, we've talked about both methods on the show. Although one of them has not been related to adhd. The one that has is music. I find listening to music helps me get into that hyper focus mode.

I would agree.

The other thing that really helps me is going into ChatGPT and telling it what I want to do because so often that the, the, the hurdle that I need to overcome. To get into that hyper focus mode is. Where do I start?

Yeah.

Or, or if it's, if it's something I've been in before, but I guess like, oh, I can't remember exactly what I did last time. Fine, feed it all into Chat GPT. I'll dump like piles of documents in and just be like, give me a starting point somewhere and then I'm in. And now I'm focused and I can just wind my way through and I'm great. But there's that, that, that. Oh, man, it's too overwhelming. Yeah. I can't get in and. And then I wind up stuck. And so chatgpt and music are, are both hacks to get me in there.

So I love that. I asked, I asked Chat GPT to find some of the positives of ADHD and a. Yeah. A sales and marketing aspect. And I love this response. It says ADHD folks are often charismatic, intuitive, and great at reading people. What's not to love. What's not.

That's it? That's what you want?

Yeah. If you're sales. Sales people and trying to read and do pacing and leading, which we've talked about on the show, I think it's, it's great. But as you said, figuring out how to turn it into positive. Very important. I love the Chat GPT method. Help figuring out. I think delegating is really important and getting help. Um, and I think we both struggle. Yes, we both struggle with that. And we've been struggling with it ever since we did episode one. And so that's very important. Like, I don't have the patience or the. I don't have. Yeah. Or the interest in like the accounting side of things and my businesses. And that's held me back. Dramatic. I think even though we've done really well, I know it's holding me back. So I always have to find somebody to help offset that weakness and because I know I suck at it.

Smart.

And I think the whole scheduling. What was the time block method or that Pomodoro.

Pomodoro thing that we talked about with Bob Levitis years ago. I can't do that. I need to stop saying that. I have not yet been successful doing that. I'm certain it would help me, but. But I just haven't found the right way to make that work in my life. So.

Yeah, I will work on that.

I will work on that.

Yeah. If. No, go ahead, Dave. Well, I was just going to say, if you have HDA tips, I'd love to Hear ADHD tips. We'd love to hear feedback at Businessbrain Show. Tell us what works for you or what we got wrong.

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Yeah, I don't even know the name of the book I'm reading. I read non stop, but this sentence stuck out at me, stuck out to me. And I wanted to mention, when I mentioned it to you here before the show, you had an interesting analogy or comment about it and the sentence was the act of trying too hard is in itself a signal of weakness. And.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah. And I, you know, I guess trying to be overly salesy or the sense of desperation, then we were kind of going around and then you mentioned something related to like imposter syndrome. So I, I just want to break it down. I actually want to have a topic on it, but I don't have, I haven't developed enough brain.

No.

To, to do that.

I, I mean, I, I think we've all experienced those people that, that are trying so hard to convince you of something that it's obvious it's not true. Right. The used car salesman mentality. And actually, I know some fantastic people who are used car salesmen. Like, it's too bad that there's this stigma, even though much of it is deserved. Right? So.

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They get a bad rap and much of it is deserved, but not all. But the, the thing it reminded me of was something I've been swimming. Had swimming around in my head, which is the idea that the real imposters never experience the syndrome. Right. The imposter syndrome that we talk about. If you're actually an imposter, you don't, you don't care.

You're not. Yeah.

You know it. You already know. I mean, if you're, if you're telling somebody something that's not true, well, then there's no syndrome. It's just. There you go.

Just a lie. It's just a lie.

Yeah, exactly.

That's brutal, man. So, yeah, it's true. And I guess being self aware and like I have a coach, a branding coach that helps me, you know, messaging and narrative. And he said something like that too, as I talked about being picky or having a very narrow funnel of deciding which clients you wanted to work with. Yeah. Because I feel like, you know, if I can't help them succeed, I would feel like a failure.

Right?

It would be. And, and he said, well, that's because you're real.

Right.

You care, you want them to succeed. And he's like, you're not focused on, I want their money. How can. You're thinking, how do I create success for them? Help them create success. And yes, you, of course, you want to get paid for it, but.

Oh, but if you help other people create success, then you can also have success along with them.

Yes.

What you're trying to say here, like it's.

Yeah, that's right.

It doesn't have to be a zero sum game. And that's the key.

And, and I think it does make you. I think it's a sign of strength and a sign of wealth or not wealth. Wisdom or, I don't know, integrity, maybe. Integrity that, that if you can just kind of stand back and let other people decide if they're going to buy your used car, use your service, use your, you know, it's like, hey, here's the value we add and then stop.

And then stop talking.

Stop with discount. Don't Discount it. Don't offer, you know, this. Don't do that. You know, don't. Yeah, just stop. Let. Let it speak for itself.

Yep.

Yeah. And so I still have some. We're gonna, we're gonna come back to this because I still have some ideas about, uh. But I thought it was pretty interesting.

Well, help us workshop it. Feedbackusbrain Show. There. I mean, there's. Yeah, there's stuff here.

I. I think so. Yeah, I think so, too. It's. It's a way you present yourself to your clients. It's a way you're advertising your marketing. You know, you don't want to be standoffish or be looked at as.

You don't want to be cocky, but you can be confident.

Yeah, that's. That's it. You want to be confident and, you know, having your results or testimonials, reviews and all that stuff, and let it. Let it speak for itself instead of just pushing so hard.

Yeah.

But, yeah, I would love your feedback at BusinessBrain Show. Tell me what I'm missing and is there a string here to pull to come up with a new thesis that.

We can break down, we can sink our teeth into in another episode? Yeah, I like it. Feedback at BusinessBrain Show. Like he said. Make sure you check out BusinessBrain show for all the links to all the things that we talk about, including our sponsor, of course, Insta360, and a link where you can review the show and join our giveaway for. For a MacBook this year. So all at BusinessBrain show, that's where it's going to be. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Enjoy the rest of your week and we'll see you on Friday. Keep living that charmed life.